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As Hertz struggles with his self-induced dilemma, he looks back over his life, searching for an answer. If he can only think things through rationally, perhaps the way forward was always there, hidden somewhere in the past, waiting for him to finally realise its significance? With a mixture of pathos and mild distaste, he reflects on his distant, ordered childhood in pre-war Germany, his unrequited love for his beautiful, haughty cousin Fanny, to whom, in desperate middle age, he would rashly propose. He remembers the family's enforced exile to London, their role as polite refugees, obligated to kindly compatriots. And then the onset of his brother's "illness", precipitating the end of his career as a concert pianist, the crumbling of his mother's dreams and his own rise as family carer. And his brief respite marriage to Josie whose pragmatism could never dovetail with his own servility.
Anita Brookner has, herself, moved on with The Next Big Thing. Her 21st novel is a finely wrought, painfully elegant treatise on old age: the wearing loneliness, the reflections, regrets and recriminations and the occasional stirrings of now-fading desires. And instead of the familiar middle-aged Brookner women, the protagonist is a man, albeit a passive and docile creature, whose lonely life has been shaped at every turn by the needs of others. Reading The Next Big Thing is not an easy experience. Brookner has stripped her characters of their flesh and, with her unique insight, let us into the distant recesses of their minds, their hearts and their souls, so often revealing how each can harbour its own conflicting desires. The only certainty in life is the inevitability of our end--in the meantime our duty to ourselves must be one of brutal self-honesty and personal fulfilment.--Carey Green
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Book Description Paperback. Condition: Good. No Jacket. Pages can have notes/highlighting. Spine may show signs of wear. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less 0.25. Seller Inventory # G0141013206I3N00
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Book Description Condition: Como nuevo. 'Herz wondered if the people he passed on the street ruminated on lost causes, as he did. Try as he might to divert himself, he could never escape the suspicion that he should be elsewhere.' Herz is seventy-three and facing the difficult question: what is he going to do with the rest of his life? How is it all going to end? He could propose marriage to an old friend he hasn't seen for thirty years; he could travel, he could make a trip to Paris to see a favourite painting; he could sell his flat, move, start afresh. He must do something with the time left but what?EAN: 9780141013206 Tipo: Libros Categoría: Literatura y ficción| Ficción contemporánea Título: Next Big ThingAutor: BROOKNER Editorial: PENGUIN PG (26 junio 2003) Idioma: EN Páginas: 256 Peso: 146 Año de publicación: 2003. Seller Inventory # Happ-2022-Jan-17-145892
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