'This would soon be a new day, all too closely resembling the others, the normal days of his present existence, in which nothing happened nor could be expected to happen'
At seventy-three Herz is facing an increasingly bewildering world. He cannot see his place in it or even work out what to do with his final years. Questions and misunderstandings haunt Herz like old ghosts. Should he travel, sell his flat, or propose marriage to an old friend he has not seen in thirty years? Herz believes that he must do something, only he doesn't know what this next big thing in life should be . . .
'Beautifully written, it draws you in and holds you fast' Daily Mail
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
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 Soft Cover. Condition: new. Seller Inventory # 9780241977842
Book Description Paperback. Condition: Brand New. 256 pages. 7.64x5.04x0.71 inches. In Stock. Seller Inventory # zk0241977843
Book Description Condition: New. Dieser Artikel ist ein Print on Demand Artikel und wird nach Ihrer Bestellung fuer Sie gedruckt. This would soon be a new day, all too closely resembling the others, the normal days of his present existence, in which nothing happened nor could be expected to happen At seventy-three Herz is facing an increasingly bewildering wo. Seller Inventory # 151157395