Dolly - (Vintage Contemporaries) by Anita Brookner (Paperback)

About the Book

The latest novel by one of the literary scene's most profound observers of women's lives. From the moment Jane first meets Aunt Dolly, with her perfumed mink and bored laughter, she is both fascinated and appalled. But as the exigencies of family life bring Jane and Dolly together, Brookner shows how we sometimes end up loving people we cannot always bring ourselves to like.

Book Synopsis

In her superbly accomplished novel, Anita Brookner proves that she is our most profound observer of women's lives, posing questions about feminine identity and desire with a stylishness that conveys an almost sensual pleasure.

From the moment Jane Manning first meets her aunt Dolly, she is both fascinated and appalled. Where Jane is tactful and shy, Dolly is flamboyant and unrepentantly selfish, a connoisseur of fine things, an exploiter of wealthy people. But as the exigencies of family bring Jane and Dolly together, Brookner shows us that we may end up loving people we cannot bring ourselves to like -- and that this paradox makes love all the more precious and miraculous.

From the Back Cover

Anita Brookner has been called "one of the finest novelists of her generation" by The New York Times and "a latter-day Jane Austen" by Publishers Weekly. Now, in Dolly, Brookner continues to explore in her masterful way the changing truths of identity and relationships in the lives of women, with this brilliant portrait of a family. Mild and self-effacing, Jane Manning is ill prepared for the eruption into her life of her glamorous aunt, Dolly. Married to Jane's uncle, Dolly swirls into the Manning home, and, with her perfumed mink and bored laugh, makes it clear that her ways are not their ways, are not in fact anybody else's ways. Dolly becomes an object of both fascination and dread, and as Jane studies her aunt, she realizes that she and Dolly have absolutely nothing in common - nothing, except the fact that they are members of the same family. Jane begins to suspect that Dolly is not the woman she appears to be, that her elegant life is not as charming as she wants people to think. Then Dolly's husband dies, and Jane finds that she and her aunt are fated to be yoked together in uneasy social and financial harness. Brilliantly written, acutely observed, Dolly is Anita Brookner at her best, an elegant and illuminating exploration of how realities change, how power and perceptions alter over the course of a family's life.

Review Quotes

"Compelling...takes us deep into the territory of the heart, with all its rocky roads and shimmering possibilities,"

-- Los Angeles Times

"About as wonderful as anything Brookner has ever written."

-- Carol Kino, The New York Times Book Review

"Poignant, beautifully told.... Only a writer of great passion, conviction and artistry could [create such] a spellbinding portrait of the dreams and frustrations of the human heart."

-- Christian Science Monitor

About the Author

Anita Brookner was born in London and, apart from several years in Paris, was a lifelong Londoner. She trained as an art historian and taught at the Courtauld Institute of Art until 1988. She is the author of twenty-seven books, including the Booker Prize-winning novel Hotel Du Lac. She died in 2016.