Making Things Better (Magill’s Literary Annual 2004)
At a glance:
- Author: Anita Brookner
- First Published: 2002
- Type of Work: Novel
- Time of Work: The late 1990’s, with flashbacks to the 1930’s
- Setting: London, with memories of Berlin, Paris, and Nyon, Switzerland
- Principal Characters: Julius Herz, Freddie Herz, Trude Herz, Herz, Fanny Mellerio Schneider (née Bauer), Bauer, Josie Burns Herz, Bernard Simmonds, Sophie Clay, Matt Henderson
- Genres: Long fiction, Novel
- Subjects: Memory, Love or romance, Twentieth century, Europe or Europeans, Exile or expatriates, World War II, Alienation, 1930’s, England or English people, Jews or Jewish life, Death or dying, London, Single people, Nazism or Nazis, 1990’s, Germany or German people, Western Europe or western Europeans, Old age or elderly people, Mortality, Great Britain, Isolation, Berlin
- Locales: Paris, France, London, England, Berlin, Germany, Switzerland
When Anita Brookner began her career, she wrote about lonely young women whose romantic dreams could not be satisfied. Brookner’s first two novels were told in the third person; she used limited omniscience to enable readers to live in the heroines’ minds. Her third novel, Look at Me (1983), was told in the first person, bringing the reader even closer to its heroine’s thoughts and feelings.
In what could be called her breakthrough novel, Hotel du Lac (1984), Brookner expanded her theme. Not only is her heroine, Edith Hope, a disappointed romantic but she also...
[The entire page is 2090 words long]
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