Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Parks, Tim - Anita Brookner (review date 28 August 1999)

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Anita Brookner (review date 28 August 1999)

SOURCE: “Signposts Pointing the Wrong Way,” in Spectator, August 28, 1999, p. 36.

[In the following review, Brookner offers a positive assessment of Destiny.]

Facts emerge slowly from the matrix of this excellent novel [Destiny], slowly because its unreliable narrator, Christopher Burton, has to cope not only with the critical condition of his marriage but with various ailments of an intransigent nature. He is in the Rembrandt Hotel, Knightsbridge; he has just enjoyed a very large breakfast—unwise, in view of his recent heart bypass operation—when he receives a telephone call from Italy which informs him that his son has died. The death has taken place in a clinic in Turin, where the son, Marco, was confined. He was schizophrenic, and had attacked himself with a screwdriver. This detail must be kept, Burton decides, from his wife. The shock resolves itself into a moment of pure...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Jo-Ann Goodwin (review date 17 October 1986)
   2. Michael J. Carroll (review date 24 January 1988)
   3. David Teagle (review date Summer 1988)
   4. Richard Eder (review date 16 October 1988)
   5. Peter Reading (review date 26 May–1 June 1989)
   6. Nicholas Clee (review date 30 August 1991)
   7. Tim Parks with Michele Field (interview date 6 July 1992)
   8. Christopher Bray (review date 4 September 1993)
   9. Nicholas Wroe (review date 10 September 1993)
   10. Frank Kermode (review date 4 November 1993)
   11. Jonathan Yardley (review date 10 July 1994)
   12. Jonathan Keates (review date 27 January 1995)
   13. Albert Read (review date 28 January 1995)
   14. Christopher Merrill (review date 24 March 1996)
   15. Nicholas Wroe (review date 19 July 1996)
   16. Keith Miller (review date 11 April 1997)
   17. Penelope Lively (review date 12 April 1997)
   18. John Derbyshire (review date 20 September 1998)
   19. Gabriele Annan (review date 5 November 1998)
   20. George Walden (review date 11 December 1998)
   21. Antony Rouse (review date 2 January 1999)
   22. Anita Brookner (review date 28 August 1999)
   23. Nicholas Fearn (review date 13 September 1999)
   24. Jenny Turner (review date 30 September 1999)
   25. D. J. Enright (review date 10 August 2000)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright