Customer Reviews

Falling Slowly

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

"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.

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.

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!

As a devoted reader of every single one of Miss Brookner's 18 novels, I can confidently declare her masterpiece has arrived. Prior to FALLING SLOWLY, I had given that designation to LOOK AT ME. This is the most vivid, heartwrenching and endlessly thought-provoking work of her career. My only disappointment (and it is always the same disappointment with each new offering) is that FALLING SLOWLY is only 227 pages long--it is powerful, harrowing and utterly unforgettable. We as readers are fortunate beyond words to have Anita Brookner in our lives--may she write at least 18 MORE novels before she calls it a day.

Finished "Falling Slowly" last night. Such despair, such bitter sad luck. And the compliance with this despair. Has Ms. Brookner never heard of transcendence? I almost thought she was going to give it a go this time but alas, "no faith," as she says. (How can an art lover have no faith?) Nevertheless, I savor her tortured novels and find a small particle of comfort in their depression. Because in the end it is the existential void vividly portrayed and that comes only from the the recognition of the relentless absurdity of most living which no thinking person can ignore. And Anita Brookner drives it home. She is a jewel; a big heavy one.

In Henry James's The Ambassadors, the aging protagonist urges his young friend to "Live! Live all you can; it's a mistake not to." Anita Brookner is often compared to James and Brookner's isolated and often friendless heroines inevitably make the quietly tragic mistake which James's character decries. In one finely-drawn novel after another over two decades, she has explored the fascinating consequences of such mistakes, finding drama and passion in what from the outside may seem like very undramatic lives.

In the moving and intelligent Falling Slowly, English translator Miriam Sharpe actually turns to readings Henry James after death and disappointment mar her life. She is a woman whose central imperative in life has been to avoid risk and alarm in whatever form. Raised by difficult, dismissive parents in a bleak household, neither she nor her sister Beatrice had been prepared to be welcomed by the world, let alone loved. Though she tried to enjoy her youth, Miriam found itdisappointing. That time of her life wasn't just a letdown in itself, it never led--as she assumed it would--to a brand new and glorious chapter of her life, "one that was to obliterate botched beginnings."

With "no particular calling," Miriam drifted into working as a translator of contemporary French novels, thanks to her gift for languages and her speed. Though this work means frequent trips to Paris, that city itself holds no romantic promise for her, existing simply as a scene for business. And her translating doesn't seem much more than a kind of intellectual drudgery. While her old-fashioned accompanist sister--whose career is unfulfilling--dreams of a man right out of a Silhouette romance, Miriam longs for a real home, a place bustling with life where she feels connected.

For Miriam, an affair and even a five-year marriage pass as if she were drugged by time itself. Her relationship with her sister fades in and out, growing more like that of her parents. In Brookner's novels, the clash between expectations and reality tends to play out on a field where overly careful people get entangled with the careless. Here, the conflicts are more muted than usual.

Falling Slowly may not be as striking or as focused as last year's stunning Visitors, in part because of POV switches. But it still showcases Brookner's strengths in registering the nuances of lives suffused by resignation and longing. She charts the sad passage of time in changing faces and fortunes, fading dreams and chintzes, better than almost any other contemporary novelist, which gives her small books an unexpectedly expansive feel. And her elegant, insightful prose is so admirably balanced, so consistently pleasurable, so seductively witty that you're often likely to reread passages or even feel moved to read them aloud to others. Like Austen, with whom she is also often compared, Brookner works on a small canvas, but with a profound understanding of the tragicomic potential of desires gone amiss.

Lev Raphael, author of LITTLE MISS EVIL, 4th in the Nick Hoffman series. www.levraphael.com

...who are over 25, until we reach terminal velocity, as it were, for life's inevitable denouement? The title is a transparent metaphor for life, and is derived from listening to the radio for the "shipping forecast," which Americans would translate into the weather report. The report normally concludes with the weather at Mallin Head, and it is the barometric pressure that is "falling slowly."

Brookner is not for the "fun read" crowd, nor those who want their heroine to conquer all in the end. And alas, a number of critical reviews seem to be from readers hoping for same. No, Anita Brookner writes with acute and painful realism about the human dilemma, and frequently addresses that slice of humanity that are middle age, middle income Englishwomen who are making accommodations for their fate in life.

The novel is essential the story of two sisters, Beatrice and Miriam. Beatrice is the older; maintained romantic hopes throughout her life; and we learn early in the novel, dies in her `50's. Miriam is the more realistic younger sister who has taken care of her, to some extent, during Beatrice's period of decline. Each has had affairs and relationships with men. Brookner carefully delineates the operative parameters in the affairs, no doubt as women tend to, almost certainly more carefully than men. Meanwhile, the men are the minor characters, well-drawn, for sure, but still a backdrop. In the middle portion of the book Brookner presents alternating chapters in the lives of the two, before bringing them together towards the end.

Concerning the "backdrop," the portraits of Max Gruber, who had once been an ugly "ladies man," and had once been Beatrice's boss, as well as Max's replacement, Simon Haggard, rang painfully authentic. The only character who did not ring authentic was the TOO accommodating journalist, Tom Rivers. I particularly liked the scene in which Miriam is imagining the scene of Simon, with family, in Verbier, on Christmas and what she does about it. Like the "shipping forecast," Henry James is woven into the novel in several places; no doubt for his character portrayals, of which I consider Brookner his equal.

I like Brookner's style of writing a fairly straightforward sentence, and then adding three, four, five modifying clauses, as though it were a jewel held to the light, and with each additional clause, the jewel is turned slightly, for greater appreciation and depth of meaning. Her dominant themes are loneliness, solitude and remembrance for those who have finally achieved terminal velocity. Hardly unique themes in literature; perhaps those that contemplate them are the very ones driven to write about them.

Consider some of Brookner's insights: (Concerning the public image of Miriam helping the ill Beatrice): "Women admired them; men were if anything abruptly dismissive, sensing an oppressively sexless world of sacrifice and obligation." (Concerning men and women preparing themselves in the morning): "With a man there was no transition: the naked face and body were quickly transformed into the clothed adult human being, with nothing to hint at frailty, at disguise, at vigilance." (And summing up many a wife's assessment of her husband): "...she could hardly remember the actual corporeal presence of her husband, who seemed to have shrunk to a small compendium of irritating habits..." (Or on the games men and women play): "...she looked back at the radiant pantomimes of affection she had mustered for men who had meant nothing to her." "She would have urged them to enjoy men, as many men as possible, before they became aware, as he was now, of the neutered state that awaited them." (And on the aging process): "Youth, middle age, and `You're looking well'". "All those trim fifty- and sixty-year olds had annoyed him. They'll find out, he thought vengefully, as he allowed himself to be led from the room."

Rich, dense, insightful, as the above quotes indicate. Ms. Brookner packs more original thinking on the human condition in one of her 10-15 page chapters than are in much longer novels. A wonderful, solid, 5-stars.

Brookner is the champion of resigned women on the sidelines of life. Yes, her prose is penetrating and exquisite, full of precise insights through precise diction, and her main characters, sisters, are well drawn, sharing a complex bond that is both a family obligation and a genuine fondness for each other. But I had to steel myself through some tedious, lugubrious reflections from these passive females who wait for men to take charge and are inevitably disappointed when they do. The doctor who tells Miriam that Beatrice has had a stroke is dismissed because he is too young, so they never seek another opinion and Beatrice dies as a result.. Miriam also dismisses the eligible and interesting man who woos her because she must comply with a married playboy in an obviously doomed affair. She expresses some desire for this cad, but it is desire at room temperature. Anita Brookner has done better. Read Hotel du Lac or Visitors. And if you're looking for puzzled British women in a less tragic vein, try Barbara Pym.

This was the first novel I have read by Anita Brookner. After having read the glowing reviews, I expected to be wowed by this book...but I was disappointed. While Brookner's writing style is descriptive and elegant, I found the pace of the book to be torturously slow and the characters themselves unsatisfying. They were all so pathetic (albeit in their own unique ways) that I either didn't care what happened to them or thought that they deserved their fate. I was happy to turn the last page of the book.

In "Falling Slowly," Miriam and Beatrice Sharpe are two sisters who are the products of a loveless marriage. However, instead of going out and grabbing happiness for themselves after they become adults, Miriam and Beatrice half-heartedly pursue careers and tepid, bloodless relationships with men. At one point, Miriam meets a man, Simon Haggard, whom she loves and who makes her feel alive. Unfortunately, Simon is a married man with children, and he is hardly a candidate for a long-term relationship. Still another man comes into Miriam's life, Tom Rivers, but she is unwilling to commit herself to him. Beatrice lives in a cloud of romantic ideals and, after retiring from playing the piano, she merely exists from day to day, without any real goals. Why read about these two depressing women? Brookner's strength is that she makes us care about Miriam and Beatrice, even though we would like to shake them. They come across as intelligent women who could make better choices in their lives if they would wake up and see the possibilities in front of them. Unfortunately, they never do.