Private View ebook

by Anita Brookner

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FREE shipping on qualifying offers. Brookner explores the complications that arise when one solitary man comes up against a woman who seems determined to invade his solitude. George Bland is an aging bachelor whose existence has been virtually a mirror image of his name-up until now. For into George's life walks Katy Gibb.

Anita Brookner CBE (16 July 1928 – 10 March 2016) was an English award-winning novelist and art historian. She was Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Cambridge from 1967 to 1968 and was the first woman to hold this visiting professorship. She was awarded the 1984 Man Booker Prize for her novel Hotel du Lac. Brookner was born in Herne Hill, a suburb of London.

I could read Anita Brookner all day long and never tire of her. Why her quiet characters who live quite conventional lives are so enchanting is a testimony to her stylistic prowess. Keep on writing, my dear Brookner!

He had only to open his door, it seemed, for her to open hers. He did not want to see her, felt if anything irritated by her apparent availability.

He had only to open his door, it seemed, for her to open hers. He did not want to see her, felt if anything irritated by her apparent availability hat he had made an auspicious start to the day. Quite a few people had telephoned to invite him to various Christmas activities.

If you did not find the book or it was closed, try to find it on the site: GO.

Mobile version (beta). If you did not find the book or it was closed, try to find it on the site: GO. Exact matches. Hotel du Lac (Panther Books).

Anita Brookner was born in south London in 1928, the daughter of a Polish immigrant family. She trained as an art historian, and worked at the Courtauld Institute of Art until her retirement in 1988. She published her first novel, A Start in Life, in 1981 and her twenty-fourth, Strangers, in 2009. Hotel du Lac won the 1984 Booker Prize. As well as fiction, Anita Brookner has published a number of volumes of art criticism.

Acclaim for Anita Brookner’s A PRIVATE VIEW Elegant. Brookners formidably dandyish satire has always exercised itself rewardingly on options and consolations. Her poetry of forlornness is. Acclaim for Anita Brookner’s. Her poetry of forlornness is stronger and stranger than ever. Hermione Lee, The New Yorker. Anita Brookner is justly praised for her restraint and insight. Think of Graham Greene’s unhappy wanderers or Henry James’s travelers. The clean lucid prose is Brookner’s ow.

Anita Brookner was too easily mistaken for her unhappy spinster heroines, but the Booker winner was a novelist of peerless wit and insight, and one of the most distinguished art historians of recent times. Published: 18 Mar 2016. Julian Barnes remembers his friend Anita Brookner: ‘There was no one remotely like her’. Anita Brookner’s subversive message – the courage of the single life deserves respect.

Modest and reliable George Bland faces retirement, surprised to find himself suddenly alone and uncertain. But his solitude is brusquely overturned when the invasive and mercurial Katy Gibb appears. Katy, by turns sulky girl and sultry woman, offers George a last chance for a adventure, an abandonment of discretion and responsibility. In the contest of wills that follows, George discovers his true nature, his enormous capacity for compromise and self-deception. The result is a novel rich in understanding of human complexity and of the desire to take charge of one's own destiny.

Gavinranadar

I am a fan of Anita Bookner, but this book was dull and ponderous beyond words. The characterizations were implausible. She tried unsuccessfully to get into a male character's thoughts and motivations and failed. Her female characters in her other books come alive even if they can be sad and depressed. This book has no momentum. It feels like she has given up early in the plot and the plot is almost non existent.
A dull self obsessed elderly man who has had little life to speak of , becomes infatuated with a silly girl who is squatting in a neighbor's apartment. She finally leaves and......thats it! Don't let this put you off Anita Brookner. Read Hotel du Lac,Family and Friends,Leaving Home, to name just a few, but skip this one.

Kearanny

George Bland has planned to spend his retirement in leisurely travel and modest entertainment with his friend Michael Putnam. However when Putnam dies George has to try to impose some purpose on his solitary life.
One day a lady of about thirty-five, Katy Gibb, appears as a temporary resident of a neighbouring flat. She claims to be acquainted with the owners' apartment, the Dunlops, although nobody in the house has been notified of Katy's arrival. She is a greedy, selfish, alluring and manipulative person and she immediately exerts a strange influence on George. Because of Katy George is forced to acknowledge that his fastidious and careful life so far has shown the evident lack of passion and daring. As this realization takes hold, George has to decide how much - or how little - he is willing to do to transform the satus quo.
Anita Brookner explores the complications that arise when one solitary man comes up against a woman who seems determined to invade his solitude. The main character is an ageing bachelor whose existence has been virtually a mirror image of his name. But can Katy's presence really change his character or is there an age when one his past changing?

Ranenast

Anita Brookner knows how to focus her readers' attention powerfully on the principal characters of her books. In this regard her skills are akin to those of an immense magnifying glass which condense the sun's wide rays into a small hot center of light: after a few chapters, her characters burst into flame under the steady gaze of the reader's scrutiny. George Bland of "A Private View" is one of those. Though he appears to live a dull and uninteresting life, the author's examination of why he does so makes for heartily provocative perusal. This novel is written in the grand tradition of other books which explore the carnival folly of desperate old age willing to immolate itself on the indifferent bonfires of youth. One is reminded of Thomas Mann's "The Death in Venice," for example. Some of the usual Brookner appetizers and entrees are on offer here: the intense internal monologue; the snake oil placebo of tea for what ails; the visits to the shops when boredom constricts; the useless days of people who have nothing to do and no one to do it with. After cavorting for awhile with George Bland and other Brookner pals, one may begin to think of England as a place inhabited solely by elderly people crushed under the weight of gargantuan checkbooks and pointless days. But it is the author's vivisectional analysis of what makes such people tick, persued with rather gleeful abandon, that makes for such riveting reading. This reviewer's advice: spend some time with George Bland and his funky fascination, Katy Gibb. One or the other of them may leave you reaching for the bicarbonate of soda, but their unsettling company is absolutely worth the experience.

Otrytrerl

The general themes of all of Anita's stories appear to be closely representative of her own personal experience of living alone, with adequate income, post retirement. I love her bravery in repeatedly exploring a generally avoided theme - that of growing old, being alone and having too much time on one's hands in which to contemplate the inevitable seeming decline into illness and helplessness.
Personally, I find the lack of inner resources of Brookner's principal characters to be a little irritating. As I read about the dull and lonely George Bland who is unable to recognise his own need to grieve the death of his close friend, floundering and panicking, I can't help but wonder why he is so helpless. I think the story would be richer, deeper, and certainly longer, if George tried various ways of dealing with his grief and loneliness before succumbing to a trite and inevitable relationship.
For example, wouldn't it be fascinating to have Anita Brookner turn her laser descriptive beam on each character in a bereavement group reccomended by his doorman? Or buy a boat and flounder about on the Thames at a yacht club, failing to really 'belong'. It's almost as if the writer herself is getting sick of these protagonists and their hopeless ineptitudes at life and relationships. Uncomfortable reading; need a brandy to hand.

showtime

I have only recently discovered Anita Brookner, and with each novel I read my appreciation of her skill deepens. She is both a simple and profound writer, and with her ability to write aging men and their view of aging and younger women she represents, in my opinion, a more distilled draft of one of her key thematic influences, Henry James. This particular novel spends a lot of time in our lead man's head as he churns the basic but dogged question, "Should I stay or should I go?" Brookner's brilliance is that through her patient and insightful prose, she can turn such a simple question into a deft treatment of the process of living and dying. I agree that she might not be for everyone but if she's for you then I simply would recommend you read ALL of her writing so as to not miss one beautifully crafted and expertly penned idea.