Brookner

Although Brookner is an unconvincing and stilted writer of dialogue, there are a few splendid exchanges in scenes of sitcom horror.

The Mistress of Gloom 2001

The moment of dramatic disclosure in Brookner's novels is often the payoff, the entertainment that allows the reader a smile at the heroine's expense.

The Mistress of Gloom 2001

Although Brookner is an unconvincing and stilted writer of dialogue, there are a few splendid exchanges in scenes of sitcom horror.

The Mistress of Gloom 2001

To suggest that Brookner is a comic writer might seem perverse; she is, after all, celebrated as the mistress of gloom, the creator of a claustrophobic, overfurnished world in which heat is always oppressive, in which a cup of warm milk offers a welcome conclusion to a slow day of perambulation, in which rejection usually leads to physical decline, and in which anything so robust as physical exercise is roundly condemned.

The Mistress of Gloom 2001

To suggest that Brookner is a comic writer might seem perverse; she is, after all, celebrated as the mistress of gloom, the creator of a claustrophobic, overfurnished world in which heat is always oppressive, in which a cup of warm milk offers a welcome conclusion to a slow day of perambulation, in which rejection usually leads to physical decline, and in which anything so robust as physical exercise is roundly condemned.

The Mistress of Gloom 2001

The moment of dramatic disclosure in Brookner's novels is often the payoff, the entertainment that allows the reader a smile at the heroine's expense.

The Mistress of Gloom 2001

This is the philosophy that Anita Brookner has been ably illustrating since 1981, when she published the slyly witty autobiographical novel A Start in Life (titled The Debut in this country), a work that deliberately played on the title of Honoré de Balzac's Un Début dans la Vie.

The Mistress of Gloom 2001

This is the philosophy that Anita Brookner has been ably illustrating since 1981, when she published the slyly witty autobiographical novel A Start in Life (titled The Debut in this country), a work that deliberately played on the title of Honoré de Balzac's Un Début dans la Vie.

The Mistress of Gloom 2001

Thirty seconds of that would make an all-night Prodigy gig seem like an evening sipping Earl Grey and reading Anita Brookner.

So Lewis Hamilton wants a longer national anthem. Has he heard the second verse? 2011

The weak link is Ellen Barkin, who is making her Broadway debut in the cartoonish role of Emma Brookner, a wheelchair-bound doctor and AIDS researcher who is as angry as Ned and twice as noble.

Larry Kramer, Loud and Clear Terry Teachout 2011