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Hotel du Lac

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Hotel du Lac

By: Anita Brookner
Narrated by: Anna Massey
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Into the rarefied atmosphere of the Hotel du Lac timidly walks Edith Hope, romantic novelist and holder of modest dreams. Edith has been exiled from home after embarrassing herself and her friends. She has refused to sacrifice her ideals and remains stubbornly single. But among the pampered women and minor nobility Edith finds Mr Neville and her chance to escape from a life of humiliating spinsterhood is renewed...

©1984 Anita Brookner (P)2014 Audible, Inc. Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Feel-Good Dream
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as usual the narration was excellent., though this not a book I would have picked up and read.

hotel down on your luck

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I truly wonderful modern classic so deserving of winning the Booker prize in 1984. Anita Brookner is a modern Jane Austen, her observations of human nature, the interior life of her heroine, the dowdy but proud, Edith, are perfect and her prose is exquisite. The ending is a clever twist not anticipated.
Anna Massey’s reading is wonderful: assisted by the fact she played Edith in the BBC adaptation of the novel.
I can thoroughly recommend.

Exquisite story and performance

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Anita Brookner is the best British contemporary author there is and this novel displays most of the traits that have become her trade-marks - but is not the best, simply serving as a pointer to a whole treasure-trove oeuvre that I have loved over the years. Going back to the first novel, it is now easy to see the parallels between this novel and the works of Edith Wharton and the ubiquitous Jane Austen, to whom all female English authors are condemned to be compared with. Brookner herself makes the case for Virginia Woolf within the narrative - but this is clearly just a knowing trick, as is the Forsterian mechanism of the bedroom door in the middle of the night.
In my view, Anita Brookner easily transcends the literary inheritance with which she is shackled and makes the case for clear, deep thinking about gender in art and life that speaks directly to the dogged reader. Hotel du Lac is indeed writing for the Tortoise market, but not in the way Edith’s agent characterises it. In subsequent works, I’ve seen at first hand the searing, uncompromising vision that is brought to the ‘lives less lived’ cast of characters.
Here, finally, the protagonist breaks free. An intellectual freedom is asserted. I’m afraid, however, that we live largely in a world of hares - and who knows that the girl in the harem-scar’em pants doesn’t have the ultimate truth tucked under that low cut up-market, high end, low taste top.
If you have not read Anita Brookner before, what better place to start, if, like me you are familiar with the best of authors then it is wonderful to revisit this old and trusted friend.

Writing for the Tortoise market

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I read Hôtel du Lac in my early twenties, and loved it. I was browsing for a new audiobook; and was delighted to find it here - especially as Anna Massey was the narrator. The latter' unmistakably elegant and crisp diction, inflections and tempo were the perfect match for this book. Now aged 50, this time around I appreciated Anita Brookner's Edith from a perspective I couldn't have grasped 30 years ago - much as I relished that first reading of it.

Listening to the wonderful Anna Massey's reading of it felt a little like a meditation, and has left me serene, reflective and satisfied. It is a masterpiece of poignant subtlety, humanity and empathy - conveyed through a gentle austerity of words; and punctuated with flashes of wry, understated humour and irony in deliciously acute observations.

This *is* deep and meaningful writing - but delivered delicately; and without any of the pretentiousness, verbosity or self-consciousness that can be the downfall of some other books in this genre. Go on retreat with Edith at the lake for an afternoon and immerse yourself in this delightful, thoughtful, and quietly uplifting book!

Superb narration of this beautifully-crafted novella

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I listen to this regularly, it’s perfectly read by Anna .

A story of one woman’s secret life .
It never grows dull.
I definitely recommend this .

Anna Massy reads this interesting story with her usual panache.

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