Altered States (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: Anita Brookner
- First Published: 1996
- Type of Work: Novel
- Time of Work: The 1960’s to the 1990’s
- Setting: London, England; Switzerland; and France
- Principal Characters: Alan Sherwood, Sarah Miller, Alice Sherwood Fairweather, Aubrey Fairweather, Angela Milsom Sherwood, Brian Smith, Sybil Sherwood Miller, Humphrey Miller, Jadwige “Jenny” Miller
- Genres: Long fiction, Psychological fiction
- Subjects: Mothers, Parents and children, Sex or sexuality, Suicide, Twentieth century, Exile or expatriates, Marriage, Obsession, Lawyers, London, Switzerland or Swiss people
- Locales: France, London, England, Switzerland
With the publication of Altered States, Anita Brookner has produced roughly one novel a year for fifteen years. Reviewers of her fiction often say that, because her novels are very similar, readers who like one will like the next. The key to her fiction is often said to be similar to the distinction which Edith Hope makes between hares and tortoises in Brookner’s Hotel du Lac (1984). Tortoises are shy, unassertive people (usually women) who lose out in the game of life; the stories in which tortoises win races have been invented to make them happy. In real life, the...
[The entire page is 1991 words long]
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