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  • Published: 1 December 2016
  • ISBN: 9780241979402
  • Imprint: Penguin General UK
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 256
  • RRP: $19.99

A Closed Eye



Novel from the bestselling author of the Man Booker Prize-winning Hotel du Lac

Naive and undemanding, Harriet Lytton expects very little of life and that is what she recieves. Married to a respectable man old enough to be her father, Harriet's only taste of passion comes when she meets Jack Peckham, the unruly, attractive husband of her friend Tessa.

Tessa and Harriet have for many years been bound together by their childhood friendship and the imposed alliance of their two daughters, Imogen and Lizzie. But events conspire to shatter the gentle rhythm of Harriet's life. Tragically restrained by her own cautious choices, she faces the cruellest losses of all: those of hope and desire.

  • Published: 1 December 2016
  • ISBN: 9780241979402
  • Imprint: Penguin General UK
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 256
  • RRP: $19.99

About the author

Anita Brookner

Date: 2013-08-06
Anita Brookner, who is an international authority on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century painting, teaches at the Courtauld Institute of Art. In 1968 she was Slade Professor at Cambridge, the first woman ever to hold this position. She is the author of Watteau, The Genius of the Future; Greuze; Jacques-Louis David; and three other novels, A Start in Life, Providence and Look at Me.

Anita Brookner was born in London and, apart from several years in Paris, has lived there ever since. She trained as an art historian and taught at the Courtauld Institute of Art until 1988. Leaving Home is her twenty-third novel.

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Praise for A Closed Eye

A bravura performance

Observer

Anita Brookner's eleventh novel is one of her best . . . She is a great writer. And her final pages, which unfold into a surprising, radiant kindness, will move you to tears.

Mail on Sunday

The portrait of Harriet's sad, kind marriage is superb; and Harriet herself is the best Brookner heroine since Edith of Hotel du Lac.

New Statesman

Loneliness can hardly have been better portrayed . . . This is Anita Brookner at her most sombre: yet not gloomy or depressing - the writing is too good.

Financial Times