Brief Lives - (Vintage Contemporaries) by Anita Brookner (Paperback)

About the Book

The latest novel by the Booker Prize-winning author of Hotel du Lac chronicles an unlikely friendship between two very different women thrust together by their husbands' business partnership--and by a guilty secret. "Anita Brookner works a spell on the reader; being under it is both an education and a delight".--The Washington Post Book World.

Book Synopsis

This novel chronicles an unlikely friendship, that between the flamboyant, monstrously egocentric Julia and the modest, self-effacing Fay, who is at once fascinated and appalled by Julia's excesses.

Review Quotes

"Anita Brookner works a spell on the reader; being under it is both an education and a delight." -- Washington Post Book World"Brookner [is] a writer of great skill and precision. Passages of brilliant writing abound, hard-won insights that startle us with Brookner's clarity and succinct intelligence." -- Michael Dorris, Los Angeles Times Book Review

"Compelling...Brookner's vision of human behavior is scrupulously honest, without ever being cruel... a gem of revelation."

-- Hilma Wolitzer, Chicago Tribune

"Accomplished...compassionate, meditative and intelligent. Empathy informs all of Anita Brookner's novels, [and] Brief Lives is yet another instance of her large and knowing heart."

-- The New York Times Book Review

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.