Hotel Du Lac

by Anita Brookner

it is my contention that Aesop was writing for the tortoise market.

She could make up characters but she could not decipher those in real life.

nothing. I have been too harsh on women, she thought, because I understand them better than I understand men.

no one was ever, ever going to tell the truth again.

Unsound elements seemed to have crept into her narrative;

The careful pretence of her days here, the almost successful tenor of this artificial and meaningless life which had been decreed for her own good by others who had no real understanding of what her own good was, suddenly appeared to her in all their futility.

that kind man who had been produced for her at that not too far distant dinner party,

for her daily task – that illicit manufacture of a substance not needed for survival.

I have, thought Edith. You did not recognize yourself.

And then she saw Geoffrey. And then she saw, in a flash, but for all time, the totality of his mouse-like seemliness.

My patience with this little comedy is wearing a bit thin.

But she thought of her little house as if it had existed in another life, another dimension. She thought of it as something to which she might never return.

but a feeling of being cut off, not only from dry land, but from any recognizable viewpoint, unsteadied her.

But no, he had forced her on to this terrible boat, this almost deserted and pilotless vessel, from which there was no hope of rescue; she saw them drifting, their aimlessness raised to almost mythological status, into ever thicker mists, while real people, on the shore, went on with their real lives,

But Edith, who had spent the years of her youth in silence and wariness, and who, in order to outwit disappointment, had learnt not to make claims, was