A Closed Eye - (Vintage Contemporaries) by Anita Brookner (Paperback)

About the Book

With the same compassionate insight and stylistic brilliance that have won her comparisons with Jane Austen and Henry James, the Booker Prize-winning author of Hotel du Lac and Brief Lives explores the self-inflicted paradoxes in the life of Harriet Lytton, a woman whose powers of submissiveness and self-denial are suddenly tested by the dizzying prospect of sexual awakening.

Book Synopsis

In A Closed Eye, Anita Brookner explores, with compassionate insight and stylistic brilliance, the self-inflicted paradoxes in the life of Harriet Lytton, a woman whose powers of submissiveness and self-denial are suddenly tested by the dizzying prospect of sexual awakening.

In Harriers gallant struggle with the single great temptation that comes her way, Brookner creates a hauntingly flawed heroine and a study in the evasions and disappointments that make up all our lives.

Review Quotes

"Anita Brookner has staked out a distinctive territory...and made it clear that she is one of the finest novelists of her generation."-- The New York Times

"If Henry James were around, the only writer he'd be reading with complete approval would be Anita Brookner. A Closed Eye is [a] marvel of ease and clarity, and precision." -- The New York Times Book Review

"[Brookner's] prose is famously graceful, her understanding of human nature always keen .... A Closed Eye exhibits all of her elegance, subtlety of perception, and wistful tenderness" -- Newsday

"Stiletto-sharp powers of observation...[Brookner] offers amusement akin to the slightly illicit pleasure of sitting down to lunch with a clever and malicious gossip. Indiscretions will be revealed, unhappiness and tragedy hinted at, and you will be...hungry for more." -- Chicago Tribune

About the Author

Anita Brookner was born in London and, apart from several years in Paris, has lived there ever since. She trained as an art historian and taught at the Courtauld Institute of Art until 1988.