Brief Lives
  • Published: 1 December 2016
  • ISBN: 9780241979396
  • Imprint: Penguin General UK
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 224
  • RRP: $39.99
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Brief Lives

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

Fay Langdon has relinquished her singing career to marry Owen, a highly successful solicitor. At one of their dinner parties Fay meets the glamorous, self-obsessed Julia and is destined to join the handful of acolytes who provide Julia with ammunition for her merciless scorn and disapprobation.

As the years pass and Fay and Julia's lives grow empty of purpose, they are drawn together by their fear of age and isolation. Yet a mutual mistrust continues to exist between them until Fay is driven to one last heroic act.
  • Published: 1 December 2016
  • ISBN: 9780241979396
  • Imprint: Penguin General UK
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 224
  • RRP: $39.99
Categories:

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.

Also by Anita Brookner

A Closed Eye
Fraud
Incidents In The Rue Laugier
Altered States
A Family Romance
A Private View
Lewis Percy
See all

Praise for Brief Lives

One of Brookner's best novels

Penelope Lively, The Observer

Utterly absorbing . . . so great is Brookner's skill as a writer that you will find it difficult not to devour this brilliant novel at one long sitting.

Daily Mail

A subtle and thorough exploration of the relationship between nostalgia and old age . . . Brooker [is] one of the bravest novelists around.

Jonathan Coe, Guardian

Compression, economy and the ability to conjure up an entire personality with a few adroitly chosen words. Brief Lives is a perfect demonstration of these gifts.

Penelope Lively, Evening Standard
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