Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Brookner, Anita (Vol. 134) - Claire Messud （review date 31 January 1999）

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Claire Messud （review date 31 January 1999）

SOURCE: “The Stifled Life,” in New York Times Book Review, January 31, 1999, p. 7.

[In the following review, Messud presents a positive assessment of Falling Slowly.]

The title of Anita Brookner's latest lament for the unlived life is drawn from the final words of a shipping forecast heard on the radio; but it also refers to the premature decline of the two middle-aged women at the center of the novel, Beatrice and Miriam Sharpe. “This was not maturity so much as anticlimax,” observes Beatrice, the elder of the two sisters. “She had not been warned about this, but had to accept its reality, rather earlier than she had anticipated.”

Beatrice, a disappointed romantic, is a pianist whose career as an accompanist comes to an unexpected end and who subsequently finds herself drifting through her days, hovering between shame and relieved resignation. She “now embraced vacancy...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. William McPherson （review date 10 February 1985）
   2. Robert Jones （review date 20 September 1985）
   3. Patricia Waugh （essay date 1989）
   4. Jonathan Yardley （review 12 March 1989）
   5. John Updike （review date 1 May 1989）
   6. Rosemary Dinnage （review date 1 June 1989）
   7. Phillip Lopate （review date 11 March 1990）
   8. Joyce Reiser Kornblatt （review date 21 July 1991）
   9. Carolyn Cooke （review date 9 September 1991）
   10. Jane Smiley （review date 22 March 1992）
   11. Constance Casey （review date 12 April 1992）
   12. Ursula Hegi （review date 10 January 1993）
   13. Gisèle Marie Baxter （essay date Summer 1993）
   14. Frank Kermode （review date 19 June 1993）
   15. David Galef （essay date Winter 1994）
   16. Jonathan Yardley （review date 9 January 1994）
   17. Carol Kino （review date 20 February 1994）
   18. John Bayley （review date 18 June 1994）
   19. Linda Simon （review date 8 January 1995）
   20. Frederick Busch （review date 22 January 1995）
   21. Hermione Lee （review date 30 January 1995）
   22. Ann Fisher-Wirth （essay date Spring 1995）
   23. Teresa Waugh （review date 17 June 1995）
   24. Hilary Mantel （review date 14 January 1996）
   25. Anne Roiphe （review date 16-30 December 1996）
   26. Deborah Mason （review date 26 January 1997）
   27. Heller McAlpin （review date 9 February 1997）
   28. Max Egremont （review date 7 June 1997）
   29. Jacqueline Carey （review date 18 January 1998）
   30. Aránzazu Usandizaga （essay date Summer 1998）
   31. Claire Messud （review date 31 January 1999）
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright