Undue Influence - Softcover

Brookner, Anita

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0241977827 ISBN 13: 9780241977828

Publisher: Penguin, 2016

Synopsis

'People are mysterious. And they do reveal mysterious connections. But sometimes one is merely anxious to alter the script. It was not the first time I had been guilty of a misapprehension'

At twenty-nine, Claire Pitt is single but not inexperienced. Attracted to Martin Gibson, a former academic married to a beautiful, manipulative invalid, she and her friend Wiggy are drawn deeper into his world. When Martin is widowed, Claire sees a possible future for herself and begins to make plans. But Martin is both more and less than he appears, as Claire is about to discover . . .

'All of Brookner's novels are great. But this is one of the best' Independent on Sunday

About this title

Review:

A new Anita Brookner book is unlikely to surprise, unlikely to shock or disturb. Yet her work continues to be utterly compelling. This, her 19th novel, follows the usual pattern: a single, bookish woman, whose literary life is dominated by loneliness and the seeming impossibility of marriage, has her forlorn equilibrium disturbed by an unsuitable attraction.

Claire Pitt, at 29 one of Brookner's younger alter egos, is financially independent, clever, emancipated but empty. When Martin Gibson comes down to the basement in the second-hand bookshop where she works, Claire is beguiled. Her desire to be part of the story she tells herself about Martin's probable life leads her to provoke the quiet crisis so indicative of a Brookner dénoument.

Brookner, who is seen by some critics as the embodiment of Jamesian exactitude, as almost prissy, is really quite the opposite. An almost pathological writer, Brookner returns again and again to her notion of the inability of modern women to think of marriage as something that will rescue them--and yet who are pulled towards the ideal (an ideal they easily deconstruct) of a romantic saviour. The ubiquity of a particular, melancholic despondence saturates her work; disappointment dominates. Despite the humour, the erudition, the classical elegance of her prose, Brookner is a modern, bitter writer. Few writers have the ability to create such complete characters and then dissect their motives so clearly. Few writers have the skill to delineate the emotional complexity of the domesticated manners that mark our inability to communicate with one other. Undue Influence is another triumph of profound, psychological investigation from one of England's finest writers. --Mark Thwaite

Review:

How can anything be so funny and so sad both at once? Every sentence is an object lesson in compression and wit. (Tessa Hadley on A Start in Life, Guardian Summer Reads, 2015)

All of Brookner's novels are great, but this is one of the best . . . Brookner, though acclaimed, deserves more excitement, more rapture from us. Hotel du Lac and the Booker Prize were a long time ago, and it's not her fault if she has bloomed equally brightly every year without fail. I think we're taking her for granted if we don't jump up and celebrate this book right now (Julie Myerson Independent on Sunday)

Her technique as a novelist is so sure and so quietly commanding. (Hilary Mantel, Guardian)

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 0241977827
• ISBN 13: 9780241977828
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224