From The Times
February 13, 2009

Strangers by Anita Brookner
Fig Tree, £16.99
The Times review by Helen Dunmore

The beauty and precision of Anita Brookner's writing is rightly praised each time she publishes a novel, but what is less often remarked on is her daring.
Few novelists, especially in these market-conscious times, would risk a first chapter set in a London flat where an elderly and disappointed man ponders his solitude on an endless, rainy Sunday afternoon.
Paul Sturgis has retired from his job in a bank, and his love affairs are over. All that remains of family is a cousin by marriage who fiercely conceals her own loneliness by fabricating a life of friendships and busyness. Once a week, ritually, these cousins meet, in recognition of a shared past, and in solidarity against a shared future where they will probably die alone.


So far, it might be thought, so bleak, and yet Brookner's art has already begun its seduction. Like Graham Greene, she draws the reader into a world that has a character and signature all of its own. “Paul Sturgis had always known that it was his destiny to die among strangers.”
Questions soon thicken: why had he known this, and did he judge his destiny correctly? But instead of answering directly, Brookner seems to put these questions aside. The fiction begins, full of contradictions and surprises.


Read Helen Dunmore's full review at The Times online.