The story lingers on

British writer and art historian Anita Brookner (1928 - 2016) won the Booker Prize with her fourth novel ‘Hotel du Lac’ in 1984, exploring the theme of having difficulties fitting into society.

Edith Hope arrives in Switzerland at Hotel du Lac, it is September and near closing season for the hotel, while a mist accompanies her arrival. She is forced to go there by her friend Penelope after an event at home. Edith is busy writing a new novel, but at the hotel she has to find herself again. She is isolated in herself and slowly opens up when meeting the few upper class guests staying at the hotel, mostly by Mrs Pusey. The other guests are a mysterious beautiful woman with a dog, an elderly woman, and later on an unknown guest who seems to have interest in Edith.

Anita Brookner had a beautiful way of writing, and making the characters alive with their own backgrounds. Brookner however stays a bit vague about those backgrounds for a long time, only to suddenly reveal a lot through one of the characters. Brookner also stays vague about how the hotel looks inside and outside, with minor details. Brookner makes the story seem more about Mrs. Pusey than Edith, probably to make the message clear of what Brookner wants to tell, by making Edith observe and write about Mrs. Pusey. Brookner uses one chapter to confirm this message somewhere halfway the book. After three quarters of the book the truth about what happened before Edith’s arrival is told, where Brookner uses one chapter.

The novel only has 184 pages, but the story lingers on a lot, and the truth is a bit of an anticlimax for it is already known from the start how it will end. The message the author wants to tell seems to be: You need no love to enjoy your life, do what makes you happy, this with or without a partner. Nowadays it is nothing new, but in 1984 it may have been.