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Brief Lives
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Brief Lives Paperback - 1992

by Brookner, Anita

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  • Paperback

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.

Description

New York: Vintage, 1992 Pb. VG+ Reprint. 260pp. Corners & ends of spine lightly rubbed & chipped.. Soft cover.
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Details

  • Title Brief Lives
  • Author Brookner, Anita
  • Binding Paperback
  • Edition 1st Vintage Ed
  • Pages 272
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher New York: Vintage, 1992, New York, New York, U.S.A.
  • Date 1992-04-07
  • Bookseller's Inventory # 019092
  • ISBN 9780679737339 / 0679737332
  • Weight 0.7 lbs (0.32 kg)
  • Dimensions 8 x 5.2 x 0.7 in (20.32 x 13.21 x 1.78 cm)
  • Themes
    • Cultural Region: British
    • Sex & Gender: Feminine
  • Library of Congress subjects England, Psychological fiction
  • Library of Congress Catalog Number 91050735
  • Dewey Decimal Code FIC

From the jacket flap

With this novel, Booker Prize-winning author Anita Brookner confirms her reputation as an unparalleled observer of social nuance and deeply felt longings. Brief Lives 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. Thrust together by their husbands' business partnership -- and by a guilty secret -- Julia and Fay develop an intense bond that is nonetheless something less than intimacy, a relationship in which we see our own uneasy compromises, not only with other people, but with life itself.

Media reviews

"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.