Anita Brookner is one of my favorite contemporary authors, and probably my very favorite contemporary author who writes about women. I can’t get over how interesting her uneventful, rather cautious heroines are. These are absolutely not books for people who read for the action, for big dramatic scenes, or grand passions. Brookner’s writing and her characters are intelligent, almost claustrophobically restrained, and full of self-possessed dignity. The beauty of this book, and all of her books, is that it presents a painstaking honest and fully-realized portrait of a woman’s mind – complete with neuroses, disappointments, regrets, shame, fears, and the steeliness that keeps it all under control. The next time I hear someone say, “I’ll never understand how women think” I’m going to recommend he go to the bookstore, fill a large bag with Brookner novels, and apply himself.

The primary thing I read her novels for is that every now and again, I'll read a line that seems to have been plucked straight out of my head and put on the page. It's almost frightening to see your thoughts in print in someone else's book. The quote for this novel was, "My second impression was that a man of such obvious and exemplary charm must be a liar."

The other thing I love about Brookner’s novels is that they all but demand introspection. I didn’t particularly agree with Rachel’s views on life; I thought she was rather joyless and coldly rational, even though I think even she understood to an extent that her chosen outlook on love was little more than an internalized defense mechanism. It was her views on other women that really made me think, though. Rachel was alone in every sense – parents dead from late childhood, no husband or long-term partner, no children, no very intimate friends. Some of this was bad luck, but some of it seemed the intentional result of holding herself aloof from everyone around her, other than the strange attachment she formed with the Livingstones. And whether from true conviction or from a sort of jealousy, she had a particular superior distaste for “protected women”. She had carved out a life for herself with absolutely no assistance, and felt constantly irritated at the easy, irresponsible lives of other women who had things handed to them. She felt they could never be truly independent or liberated in the way she was – they couldn’t face the hard decisions, the unromantic truth of life for an single woman of a certain age.

Naturally, I felt a bit stung. For the past few years, I’ve flattered myself that I am, or at the very least could be, completely independent. I have a job and a mortgage, I save for retirement, I’m reasonably well educated, and have made Thanksgiving dinner without my mother’s assistance. That seemed like a respectable notion of independence to me until I thought about it a bit more after finishing this book last night. In honesty, I am and have always been one of Rachel’s protected women. My parents kept a close eye on me my entire childhood. They let me to live “on my own” at a private college that came equipped with housekeeping, security guards, and lovely roommates, in what I considered a coup of independence. Even my one year of living “alone” at graduate school was spent with housemates and the fuzzy emotional blanket of being engaged. That naturally flowed into marriage, complete with another set of watchful parents and wonderful husband who deals with all the salespeople, strangers, and crazy people that I flatly refuse to speak to, as well as the repairs, car maintenance, bugs, minor injuries, and a million other things that I find myself unequal to dealing with. I find myself in the position of both respecting the honesty of Rachel’s criticism and feeling rather resentful at the idea that my good fortune somehow makes me less of an adult or a serious person. The point to this long ramble is that Brookner has a fantastic way about bringing these classic, no-easy-answer women’s questions to the forefront of your mind. I have a whole stack of her novels on my shelves at home, and can’t wait for the next one.