Falling Slowly (Vintage Contemporaries) - Softcover

Brookner, Anita

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0375704248 ISBN 13: 9780375704246

Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2000

Synopsis

In Falling Slowly, Anita Brookner brilliantly evokes the origins, nature, and consequences of human isolation. As middle age settles upon the Sharpe sisters, regret over chances not taken casts a shadow over their contented existence. Beatrice, a talented if uninspired pianist, gives up performing, a decision motivated by stiffening joints and the sudden realization that her art has never brought her someone to love. Miriam, usually calm and lucid, slides headlong into an affair with a charming, handsome--and very married--man. And as each woman awakens to the urgency of her loneliness, illness threatens to sever them both from the one happiness they have grown to count on: each other. Painfully wise, the Sharpe sisters embody the conflicting yearnings Jane Austen delineated in Sense and Sensibility.

About this title

Review:

Anita Brookner has no illusions about desire--or illusion--yet she is well aware of their unrelenting power. In her 18th novel, Falling Slowly, two sisters lead lives of quiet but no less painful panic. Beatrice Sharpe, a classical accompanist who is at the end of her career and health, has long dreamed of the protection of men. Alas, what her older sister, Miriam, thinks of as a "disastrous innocence" seems to have imprisoned and defeated her. Miriam, on the other hand, who is in her late 40s and divorced, prides herself on her strategies for getting through the long London days. Her work as a translator, though not ultimately fulfilling, keeps her occupied and marginally undefeated.

Both had been taught by their parents to expect little and complain less, yet they are surrounded by a world of interconnection and privilege that is ever out of reach. The narrative offers Miriam first the possibility of passion (illicit and guilt-making) and then a chance for commitment. Since we are in Brooknerland, you can guess how this will turn out. Beatrice is considerably less fortunate. At one point, the two discuss a Colette tale. The more knowing Miriam decides that the author comes out of it better than her characters, because she's the onlooker. Beatrice, surprisingly, has the last word: "There must be some consolation for being an onlooker," she realizes. "The role is not always an enviable one." Out of such seemingly minor moments, Brookner creates a tragedy, her exquisite, controlled sentences sculpting broken lives in which control itself is the culprit. --Kerry Fried

From the Back Cover:

"Brookner is a writer of great skill and precision." --Los Angeles Times
Book Review

"If Henry James were around, the only writer he'd be reading with complete approval would be Anita Brookner."

--The New York Times Book Review

"Few contemporary novelists can match Ms. Brookner's consistently high level of achievement." --The Wall Street Journal

"Anita Brookner works a spell on the reader; being under it is both an
education and a delight." --The Washington Post Book World

About this edition

• Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0375704248
• ISBN 13: 9780375704246
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240