Falling Slowly [Paperback]

Anita Brookner (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 4, 2000

In Falling Slowly, Anita Brookner brilliantly evokes the origins, nature, and consequences of human isolation. As middle age settles upon the Sharpe sisters, regret over chances not taken casts a shadow over their contented existence. Beatrice, a talented if uninspired pianist, gives up performing, a decision motivated by stiffening joints and the sudden realization that her art has never brought her someone to love. Miriam, usually calm and lucid, slides headlong into an affair with a charming, handsome--and very married--man. And as each woman awakens to the urgency of her loneliness, illness threatens to sever them both from the one happiness they have grown to count on: each other. Painfully wise, the Sharpe sisters embody the conflicting yearnings Jane Austen delineated in Sense and Sensibility.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Anita Brookner has no illusions about desire--or illusion--yet she is well aware of their unrelenting power. In her 18th novel, Falling Slowly, two sisters lead lives of quiet but no less painful panic. Beatrice Sharpe, a classical accompanist who is at the end of her career and health, has long dreamed of the protection of men. Alas, what her older sister, Miriam, thinks of as a "disastrous innocence" seems to have imprisoned and defeated her. Miriam, on the other hand, who is in her late 40s and divorced, prides herself on her strategies for getting through the long London days. Her work as a translator, though not ultimately fulfilling, keeps her occupied and marginally undefeated.

Both had been taught by their parents to expect little and complain less, yet they are surrounded by a world of interconnection and privilege that is ever out of reach. The narrative offers Miriam first the possibility of passion (illicit and guilt-making) and then a chance for commitment. Since we are in Brooknerland, you can guess how this will turn out. Beatrice is considerably less fortunate. At one point, the two discuss a Colette tale. The more knowing Miriam decides that the author comes out of it better than her characters, because she's the onlooker. Beatrice, surprisingly, has the last word: "There must be some consolation for being an onlooker," she realizes. "The role is not always an enviable one." Out of such seemingly minor moments, Brookner creates a tragedy, her exquisite, controlled sentences sculpting broken lives in which control itself is the culprit. --Kerry Fried --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Women whose empty emotional lives are conducted behind a facade of stoic acceptance are Brookner's stock-in-trade. Here, she evokes an almost palpable atmosphere of resigned regret as she chronicles a turning point in the fortunes of two middle-aged sisters in London. Beatrice and Miriam Sharpe have spent their entire lives falling slowly through space: unattached, isolated from society, essentially passive. Miriam, the younger, sharp-tongued, divorced sister, who earns a comfortable living as a translator, is now dryly disillusioned and skeptical about the future. Beatrice, whose contract as a piano accompanist has not been renewed, is a fluttery, incurable romantic who has always expected to meet her Prince Charming. Both have lived cautiously, waiting for high points that have never arrived. Now they both realize that they are on the downhill side of life. During the course of several months, Miriam falls in love with a faithless man and is betrayed, and loses both Beatrice and another man whose love could have redeemed her hermetic existence. Brookner is acutely sensitive to her characters' emotions, minutely dissecting the particular state of suspended loneliness in which they dwell. As usual, the reader is surprised when the cool, understated narrative elicits sudden heartache. But there's an unwelcome surprise, too: uncharacteristically, Brookner employs a cliched plot device to signal the end of Miriam's hopes. Survival with dignity is Miriam's small triumph, after she realizes that "I'm better off alone.... There were no happy endings." Brookner's (Visitors) impeccable craftsmanship and worldly irony make each of her novels memorable, but here her heroines' passivity becomes exasperating.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Vintage (January 4, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375704248
• ISBN-13: 978-0375704246
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.6 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #764,969 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A beautiful but grim novel, January 23, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Falling Slowly: A Novel (Hardcover)

"Falling Slowly" is Anita Brookner's 18th novel in as many years, and one has to wonder: How many ways are there to say that a human's lot is a lonely, desultory one? This is the story of two middle-aged sisters, Beatrice, a stately romantic, and the younger Miriam, a hard realist. Even lovers and marriage offer the sisters no relief from loneliness and their state of being "mysteriously isolated from the world." It is tempting to compare Brookner to Barbara Pym, for they both write about women in that same segment of London society-- intelligent women of "comfortable" circumstances, always assessing how "suitable" everything is and turning to cups of tea in moments of crisis. But while Pym's women seem old fashioned, they are really quite game as they look to catch the vicar's eye at a church "jumble sale." Brookner's women-- and men-- although more modern, are more thoroughly introverted and repressed. When happiness dangles before them they invariably find an excuse to return to their self-imposed solitude. Oddly, however grim Brookner's outlook, one continues to read her novels for their beautiful, precise prose, and for her quiet snatches of humor.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Beautifully written and extremely depressing, June 25, 2000

By 

Jo Manning (Miami Beach, FL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Falling Slowly (Paperback)

I once bumped into Anita Brookner at a museum exhibition in London. She looked fiercely intelligent, exactly like her photograph in Falling Slowly, and she gave me the odd impression that there was a zone surrounding her, a wall, if you will, of privacy. I instinctively stepped back to give her that space. Was this my imagination, this wall? Or had I read too many Anita Brookner novels and identified her too closely with her protagonists? I don't know. But I have read a number of Brookner novels, and, while enjoying her fine, nuanced writing, I have always wanted to get out and interact with others after I have finished one of her books. Her characters are so isolated, so lonely, so trapped in worlds of their own making, never seeming to get anywhere, going round and round in circles of carefully-controlled routine. Dismaying, and ultimately depressing. In this book, two sisters, Beatrice and Miriam Sharpe, who grew up in a cold home, with parents who were unhappily married, go through the motions of living. Beatrice is a concert pianist manque who ended up in a dead-end job as an accompanist. Miriam translates French novels into English (or vice-versa---it's not clear), a solitary occupation that she conducts at home and at the London Library. Beatrice, a romantic, never gets the romance in real-life that she finds in romance novels. Miriam's 5-year marriage to a scientist ends when he leaves for Canada with his lab assistant. Miriam could care less. She moves in with her sister, and then back out, but they wind up together at the end, not particularly happy in each other's company, but not particularly happy in anyone else's company, either. Even Miriam's affair with Simon, a too-handsome married man, a classic womanizer, is not very much fun. Is there sexual fulfillment? Brookner barely goes into that. Another man, Tom Rivers (a play on the Rivers character in Jane Eyre), might be just what Miriam needs after Simon dumps her, but he is abruptly removed from the scene. Several reviews indicate that the book ends on a positive note. That needs qualification---what's positive for a character in a Brookner novel doesn't pass for positive in many other places. Yes, Miriam, after Beatrice's death, seems to be interacting a bit more with other people, but not so that anyone with a richer social and emotional life would recognize. While I respect Brookner's writing skill, I would recommend Falling Slowly only to die-hard fans.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another moving Brookner experience!, June 8, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Falling Slowly: A Novel (Hardcover)

I should confess at the outset that I harbor the same unbounding love for Anita Brookner's writing that I do for the acting of Anthony Hopkins -- that is, I would be awestruck to see Hopkins on stage merely scratching his head or filing his nails, and I would probably wait on line to see a cheque written by Brookner! My bias notwithstanding, this has become my new favorite Brookner novel, as Miriam is the Brookner heroine with whom I have identified most strongly. She is definitely 'typical' of the somewhat repressed, guarded and alienated upper/middle class women whom Brookner has crafted, but at the same time, Miriam has a spark and feistiness that went far to balance out some VERY sensitive moments vis-a-vis her more delicate sister Beatrice -- think Anna from "Fraud" with a stronger backbone! I expect all Brookner fans will share an enthusiastic reaction to this book, and I believe that it's more contemporary vibe and heroine will attract new readers to the Brookner fold!