Book 33 - Anita Brookner "Incidents In The Rue Laugier"

[jazzy_dave]

Anita Brookner -"Incidents In The Rue Laugier" (Penguin)




This is a fine beautifully written novella. She weaves wonderfully between the perceptions of self versus how we are perceived and the gaps and the traps that exist on both levels. She shows, again in this book, that there are no straight lines in life. One can have a vision and determination, but always along the way there will be circumstances and decisions and new channels in personal relationships, beliefs, attitudes, ways of living that could not have been foreseen or fixed.

ncidents in the Rue Laugier involves family conflicts and class differences, a doomed love affair, and a marriage that ultimately was, in its own crabbed way, successful. But Anita Brookner presents more than an interesting story – she examines the nature of marriage and the struggle to build a joint life using limited individual resources.

I love the way she creates the sense of missed opportunities because of misunderstanding and miscommunication, sometimes intentional, sometimes not, but all building the walls that separate, that define a life, and become too high to scale, or become so much of the fabric of life and perception that they are not even seen as walls.

A book of quiet reflections on life.