Altered States [Paperback]

Anita Brookner (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 12, 1998

Standing on a railway platform in a Swiss resort town, sensibly clad in his Burberry raincoat and walking shoes, a man thinks he may be looking at the woman for whom he ruined his life many years earlier. Alan Sherwood, a quiet English solicitor, remembers back to a time when he stepped briefly out of character to indulge in a liaison with Sarah Miller, an intriguing but heartless distant relative--only to find himself in a series of absurd situations that culminated in his marriage to Sarah's clinging, childlike friend Angela.

With her compassionate portrait of a man who has paid a terrible price for his folly, Anita Brookner gives us a novel that it at once harrowing and humane. In the traditions of Henry James and Thomas Mann, Altered States is a beautifully rendered tale of loneliness, guilt, and erotic obsession.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Booker Prize winner Brookner excels at rendering the stoic, muted lives of lonely people. In another of her coolly rendered but immensely absorbing novels, she trains her keenly observant eye on the fear of facing old age alone. Her 16th novel (after Incidents in the Rue Laughier) is also a stunning study of obsessive passion and of the ways one man's promising life is irrevocably altered by an unwise but irresistible attraction. Narrator Alan Sherwood, a conventional, dutiful London solicitor, now in his mid-50s, looks back on events that shaped his life over 15 years earlier: his reckless, mad lust for and one-night liaison with scornful, self-centered Sarah Miller (granddaughter of his father's first wife); his loveless marriage-on-the-rebound to prim, clinging Angela Milsom; the still-birth of their infant daughter, which Angela unfairly blames on Alan's absence (he was off secretly pursuing Sarah); and Angela's subsequent suicide. Using Alan's soul searching as the framework of her narrative, Brookner explores the discordant ways men and women view each other and the world. Alan, who mythologizes calculating, ruthless Sarah as a "passively demonic" pre-Raphaelite vision, later comes to understand that childishly dependent Angela, who inhabits the other end of the spectrum, is as aberrant a personality as Sarah. Indeed, it is a little disconcerting that Brookner's view of female nature here seems essentially uncharitable and extreme. All the women in this book, including Alan's mother and his uncle's new wife, create some sort of havoc in trying to balance their needs for intimacy and independence. Yet Brookner makes them credible, and her story of a decent man forever adrift in "intense and hopeless longing" is alive with tension and heartbreak.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

With predictable regularity, Brookner (Incidents in the Rue Laugier, LJ 11/15/95) produces a brooding, atmospheric novel every year or so. And with equal predictability, her quaint, old-fashioned characters tend to aging parents, take unexciting trips abroad, and conduct unsatisfactory love affairs. A loyal reader may be forgiven for feeling that, over time, Brookner's plotlines and characters begin to merge. Her latest protagonist is Alan Miller, a middle-aged widower who works as a solicitor, pays dutiful visits to his mother and her new husband, and pines away for an unrequited love. His obsession with Sarah, a distant cousin and a callous free spirit, progresses from admiration to stalking. After he accepts that she is out of reach, he settles into an unhappy marriage with her friend, Angela. But Sarah continues to drift in and out of his life, and Alan remains besotted with her, eventually putting his marriage at risk. Despite similarities to previous Brookner novels, expect a demand and purchase where necessary.
-?Barbara Love, Kingston P.L., Ontario
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Vintage; First Edition edition (January 12, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679773258
• ISBN-13: 978-0679773252
• Product Dimensions: 5.1 x 0.6 x 7.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #562,737 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a compelling psychological novel about obsession, April 17, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Altered States (Hardcover)

Altered States continues to haunt me two weeks after I finished it. The main character, an intelligent and prosperous British attorney, encounters a sexual obsession that has the tenacity of inexorable fate. The story is told entirely from his point of view, and it's the reader's job to decide how credible his point of view is. Brookner's writing is precise and cutting. While her conclusions about human existence are shocking, she treats her flawed characters tenderly.

I'm reminded of the old Hitchcock TV shows and of Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment. It's a short book, very much worth reading.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Tragic Yet Tender..., October 12, 2002

By 

"celiatraum" (Knoxville, TN United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Altered States (Paperback)

A literary tapestry of passion, obsession, melancholy and despair, Altered States cuts straight to the heart of the human condition. So resonant is this brutally poetic saga of innocence lost, the reader cannot help but to reflect upon her own experiences with tenderness and perhaps a degree of sorrow.

A respected attorney and co-inheritor of the law firm of Sherwood Smith, Alan Sherwood treasures his solitude and unwavering ability to keep emotional entanglements at bay. Yet, his well-developed defenses prove useless upon his encounter with the beautiful and utterly disingenuous Sarah, his niece by way of his mother's marriage. Indeed, Sarah's capabilities for emotional indifference are a cut above Alan's own.

As his obsession intensifies, Alan finds himself falling ever more deeply into the abyss until, in a moment of physical and emotional exhaustion, he surrenders. No longer able to endure the turmoil inherent within his quest for the ever-elusive Sarah, he concedes to marry Angela, a meek young woman of impeccable culinary talents with not-so-subtle domestic yearnings and a most tender soul.

It is not long before the match proves tragic for all involved.

Yet, this extraordinary novel is far more than a tale of unrequited love. Rather, it is an exploration into the depths of the human soul and its ability to endure - as well as to succumb.

Altered States is certain to touch any reader who has experienced the exploitation of her own vulnerabilities within careless hands and has seen her beloved illusions shatter beneath the harsh light of day. She may contemplate the past with tender reminiscence yet also look ahead with a fair inkling of hope for somewhere within there resides a longing to embrace those illusions once more.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The star characters in our lives don't always play fair....., May 8, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Altered States (Hardcover)

Alan Sherwood, to the unknowing observer, would appear the typical, traditional bachelor- staid, set in his ways, a traditionalist....pompous, even! Yet Alan has loved, been briefly married and then widowed, and has been subject to a passion strong enough to have dominated and directed much of his life.
This is a book about human relationships...about the mother son relationship, about husband wife relationship, about friendship...and, of course, about romantic love. It is a story with no happy ending, for the characters, as in real life, firmly refuse to be puppets to an overall stringpuller, displaying a will and direction each to this own. Above all, this is a book about growing old, the stage of life each of us will reach, if we are lucky, if we are careful, and which each of us must decide how to handle.
I enjoy novels written in the first person, and I found Anita Brookner's decison to write from the male viewpoint a satisfying way to have this story told. I related to Alan, and to his mother,and to poor Angela, and to upright, so correct Aubrey and to desperate Jenny. even to the feckless, willful, soul-destroying Sara. In fact, I could identify them from among my aquaintances right now..or point them out in the street tomorrow.
I see that another reviewer complains that the story and characters are unresolved....but that is also the point of this tale.. the people in our lives don't always accept the roles we've assigned them...and often, if they do accept, they don't play their parts as well as we'd like....
But life's like that, isn't it....doesn't always `go by the book'....not like a a Mills & Boon, anyway...
But for a feel of the real thing, read `Altered States'. And read it slowly....it's too beautifully crafted a novel for skimming!

Robin Knight