Strangers
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Review
Nothing less than brilliant, often highly amusing and, ultimately life affirming (Sunday Telegraph )
Each book is a prayer bead on a string, and each prayer is a secular, circumspect prayer, a prayer and a protest and a charm against encroaching night (Hilary Mantel Guardian )
The beauty and precision of Brookner's writing is rightly praised each time she publishes a novel, but what is less often remarked on is her daring...like Graham Greene, she draws the reader into a world that has a character and signature all of its own...Brookner's wry, dry lightness of touch creates a bloom on the darkness of her characters' sufferings...Strangers is a novel of sober brilliance, and the unerring, unflinching Brookner is still a much underestimated novelist (Helen Dunmore The Times )
No one writes with more skill and honesty about the human condition and this book is possibly her finest (Julie Myerson Observer Books of the Year )
A novel of great stylistic beauty and psychological truth...the pitiless depiction of the final stages of life - and the refusal to allow her characters any consolation - makes Strangers as great a reflection on fear and regret as Philip Larkin's poem Aubade or Beckett's Endgame (Mark Lawson Guardian )
In the hands of a lesser novelist, her stories of human frailty would be depressing, but she manages to make them sparkle with life - and always with hope...consistently absorbing (Daily Telegraph )
Strangers is, in its own way, definitive. A more frightening, demoralising account of how hard life can be, without work, and above all without family, would be difficult to conceive...Brookner has given classic expression to what she sees to be a central truth of the human condition, absolute loneliness at the last...nothing less than a great horror story (David Sexton Evening Standard )
Anita Brookner is a distinguished and defiant writer whose books occupy a unique place in English literature. Her subject is the best one: the definition of human nature. Although her novels often convey the loneliness inherent in the human condition, they do so in such an acute and bold way that loneliness itself is shown to be a state as tempestuous and startling as any other sort of crisis. In Brookner's hands, in her descriptions so vivid and exact, it can be exhilarating...her books are unfailingly well written, they give voice and a sense of fierce entitlement to a sort of existence that might otherwise go unrecorded...Brookner's is a literature that may be harsh but it is absolutely necessary (Susie Boyt Independent )
Paul Sturgis is a brilliant and affecting creation by a writer whose empathy runs deep, and whose pitch is perfect...a brisk and moving story (Spectator )
Each book is a prayer bead on a string, and each prayer is a secular, circumspect prayer, a prayer and a protest and a charm against encroaching night (Hilary Mantel Guardian )
The beauty and precision of Brookner's writing is rightly praised each time she publishes a novel, but what is less often remarked on is her daring...like Graham Greene, she draws the reader into a world that has a character and signature all of its own...Brookner's wry, dry lightness of touch creates a bloom on the darkness of her characters' sufferings...Strangers is a novel of sober brilliance, and the unerring, unflinching Brookner is still a much underestimated novelist (Helen Dunmore The Times )
No one writes with more skill and honesty about the human condition and this book is possibly her finest (Julie Myerson Observer Books of the Year )
A novel of great stylistic beauty and psychological truth...the pitiless depiction of the final stages of life - and the refusal to allow her characters any consolation - makes Strangers as great a reflection on fear and regret as Philip Larkin's poem Aubade or Beckett's Endgame (Mark Lawson Guardian )
In the hands of a lesser novelist, her stories of human frailty would be depressing, but she manages to make them sparkle with life - and always with hope...consistently absorbing (Daily Telegraph )
Strangers is, in its own way, definitive. A more frightening, demoralising account of how hard life can be, without work, and above all without family, would be difficult to conceive...Brookner has given classic expression to what she sees to be a central truth of the human condition, absolute loneliness at the last...nothing less than a great horror story (David Sexton Evening Standard )
Anita Brookner is a distinguished and defiant writer whose books occupy a unique place in English literature. Her subject is the best one: the definition of human nature. Although her novels often convey the loneliness inherent in the human condition, they do so in such an acute and bold way that loneliness itself is shown to be a state as tempestuous and startling as any other sort of crisis. In Brookner's hands, in her descriptions so vivid and exact, it can be exhilarating...her books are unfailingly well written, they give voice and a sense of fierce entitlement to a sort of existence that might otherwise go unrecorded...Brookner's is a literature that may be harsh but it is absolutely necessary (Susie Boyt Independent )
Paul Sturgis is a brilliant and affecting creation by a writer whose empathy runs deep, and whose pitch is perfect...a brisk and moving story (Spectator )
Product Description
'He was haunted by a feeling of invisibility, as if he were a mere spectator of his own life, with no one to identify him in the barren circumstances of the here and now.'
Paul Sturgis is retired and lives alone in South Kensington. He walks alone and dines alone, taking pleasure in small exchanges with strangers. His only acquaintance is a widowed cousin whom he visits on Sundays. Unable to make sense of his solitary nature, and fearing death among strangers, he wonders whether at last he might be ready for companionship. But a chance meeting with an old girlfriend and an encounter in Venice with a recently divorced younger woman compel Sturgis to decide how (and with whom) he will spend the rest of his days ...
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
16 of 16 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Anita Brookner writes wonderful English, has a masterful eye for detail and records the small events of life, usually with telling accuracy. I have always enjoyed her work, until this one. I found Strangers unremittingly depressing, repetitive and empty and it was with effort that I reached the end, only because I hoped some final shaft of light, and not necessarily a happy ending, might be the saving grace. But no, nothing lifted the dreary remaining years of the main character, Paul, for more than a few moments at a time before he sunk back into the same old doleful resignation. Yes, sad and painful novels have their place, but this seemed hollow and had no real insights to offer. For me it would have made a better short story.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This is one of my favourite Brookner's novels. Every sentence is a delight. Reading this novel is like reading a classic novel "Oblomov" by Russian writer Ivan Goncharov. It's thought provoking and Brooknerian contemplation of one's own thoughts, feelings, attention to details, solitude and self-examination are so penetrating. There are very few writers who can write every sentence as beautifully as Brookner. There are no comparisons. She is unique. Her language is artistic and high flown and her prose is exceptionally elegant. Her writing is a work of art. Others who come after her will always be copies. It saddens me that no one can or ever will write like Anita Brookner again. She paints her feelings with words. This novel reminds me of what Lytton Strachey once said about Virginia Woolf's novel, "To the lighthouse", "How on earth does she make the English language float and float?"
15 of 16 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
There is no getting around it, this is a novel about old age and loneliness. Like all Brookner's novels, the hero/ine is solitary, well off, and given to melancholy mental soliloquies. As always, the protagonist's choice of company is unsatisfactory, the few elderly people who have sparsely peopled his past and who are egotistical, selfish and argumentative, or a 50-ish woman who loudly presents claims and demands, amply self justified, of course. So the alternatives are unfulfilling company and the demands that company makes, or isolation and solitary cogitation, indeed fear of dying alone. Brookner skillfully juxtaposes pages of inner thoughts and anxieties, long spun-out indecision, with rapid fire confrontational dialogue as the protagonist tries ineffectively to placate acquaintances, who reject his politeness and counter with forthright rudeness and renewed demands. This is a longtime Brookner theme: the quiet, peaceable and well-behaved are at the mercy of charming, gregarious users, out to exploit the quiet householder, turn him out of his or her house in the guise of a short term arrangement, and extract financial advantage from the protagonist's innocent friendship. Though every novel is a variation on this theme, there is no sense of repetition. Miss Brookner's novels are each distinct, each a quiet universe of feeling, with naifs and monsters vying unequally in an indifferent London. Always there is London, bleak, chill, raining, even springtime a disappointment. The protagonist's London is juxtaposed with Paris or southern France where he seeks the warm deliverance of the sun. Somehow I never find these novels depressing. Miss Brookner is master of her restricted landscape, sui generis, but her bleak worldview is not for everyone.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
The Ideal Stranger Who Takes the High Road: Curious, Friendly, and...
Gertrude Stein once wrote, "I write for myself and strangers," and one wonders whether Anita Brookner doesn't do exactly the same, depicting characters few would appreciate except... Read more
Published 12 months ago by G. Charles Steiner
Eruditely dull
I had been meaning to read Anita Brookner for some time; now I really wish I hadn't bothered. In spite of the gushing reviews, I found Strangers to be an extremely tiresome, not to... Read more
Published 12 months ago by Frazer
Wasted life.....
Although this book is written through the eyes of a man who has been 'too nice' to love, has therefore decided to stay largely uninvolved and is now feeling the loneliness of old... Read more
Published 16 months ago by jesusfreak
author trying to be too clever
This is a short book, it's only merit. I think Brookner is tying to be too clever in this novel.The central character is certainly narcissistic and perhaps this is the... Read more
Published 18 months ago by bubble
Stylish but tedious
Anita Brookner's elegant prose is written in shades of grey and wasted on a central character who has little to recommend him other than an enormous capacity for egocentric navel... Read more
Published on 9 May 2010 by Bran
the hidden people
As expected Anita Brookner produces a novel which not only addresses but exposes what life is for many individuals in the UK. Read more
Published on 29 Mar 2010 by Eliza Moore
Horrible women characters
I agree with Liz Taylor (!) - this novel is unrelentingly depressing. Also we are left with no satisfactory ending - which I hate. Read more
Published on 5 Feb 2010 by SueBee
New to Brookner
I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I had never heard of Anita Brookner, until I came across this latest work. Read more
Published on 6 Jan 2010 by C. Askew
"I hate the past"
This elegant and contemplative novel blends the inner lives of three people all earning for some kind of connection. Read more
Published on 6 July 2009 by Michael Leonard
Review by S King
I must have read a different book! I found this self-indulgent, dull and lacking plot. On a positive note I felt some empathy for Paul - but, oh, how I wanted him to get off his... Read more
Published on 29 May 2009 by Sarah Marshall
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