Customer Reviews

The Rules of Engagement: A Novel (Brookner, Anita)

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

 

 

I hesitate to call a book a masterpiece but that's the word that passed through my mind when I was carried to the conclusion of the book and was moved to tears... for a half an hour! A book hasn't made me cry in decades. This book was worth every tear because I experienced something profound and important about the human experience that I think makes me a better, more compassionate person.

Ms. Brookner developed a subtle theme with such delicacy that I truly felt emotionally moved by a profound understanding of what can happen in a life when things don't go right for a person from the beginning. The book is very realistic and without being emotionally manipulative shows two lives develop out of family situations that formed shaky foundations.

I have often thought that there are some stories that require a novel to tell them, stories about people that require not just a novel, but a work of art to convey exactly what their lives were. Ms. Brookner achieves such a work of art in The Rules of Engagement. In the end, I felt that I had experienced the essence of two people's lives.

I listened to the audio version first, which is beautifully done, then bought the book for my library.

Beautiful, delicate, masterful.

This is Anita Brookner at her very best. Fascinating, introspective examination of women and aging in Brookner's unmistakable style. Universal themes, written beautifully. I just reread it, liked it even better the second time. Underlined half of the book, so much was worth going back for. Higest recommendation!

As seen through the eyes of Elizabeth, a middle-aged Londoner with an upper middle-class upbringing, this book is a most prescient examination of what life can bring in that social milieu: respectable, but dull marriage, following all manner of "rules," loneliness, adultery, isolation, etc. As Elizabeth's life unfolds, it is her introspection that primarily interests the author. As usual Brookner is a master of the precise phrase, the pithy sentence, which does require a very careful reading. The appeal of this book is definitely towards those interested in reflecting on life's difficulties and vagaries.

Ok, so Rules of Engagement is not an action-packed novel; it is moving nonethless. Previous descriptions of Elizabeth and Betsy are accurate, and the reason they deserve Brookner's skilled description and dissection is that so many people, not just women, are just like them. They arrive at middle age not knowing how exactly how their early decisions determined the course of their lives.

This is a reflective, analytical, beautiful novel that reveals much about life to those who read to the end.

This is the first of her novels that I read, and I have to say that I expected more. The characters are weakly drawn, and maybe because I'm not English, I didn't understand their motivations. In addition I didn't like any of the characters, and couldn't identify with them. It was also very very depressing.

Following the inner dialogue of a woman from age 10 to nearly 60 is like taking an introspective journey. Brookner has a gift that turns a story where nothing happens into an addictive, poignant and moving experience.

I'm a bit shy of writing this. I respect Brookner and the high esteem in which she is held. This is one of the most depressing novels I have read recently-a vision of how not to live a life, of chances missed. A friend of mine once complained that author William Trevor was "mean to his characters". It seems that the same could be said of Brookner. though this is the only work of hers I've read. I have to confess it leaves me not wanting to read more.

A previous reviewer respected Brookner and hesitated to criticize this novel for that reason--I'll give her two stars for this work for the same reason, else this deserves one star. And that star also only for having been able to complete a novel.

The prose is tedious and full of obstacles; the novel and the writing style lack clarity. I don't mind an overly narrative voice to the story, which this book has, but it should not be laid on with a shovel. This creates a dense prose, so little movement, so little lightness, makes the book so difficult to read (read plod through with aching legs).

I have no comment on the characterization, which was good, or the characters themselves--I care little if they are selfish, self-absorbed, pitiful, valiant, helpless. But for me to believe in them, to care for them, to want to follow their lives and their stories, the writing should be superlative. I hear Brookner won a Booker sometime ago--I expect much better writing in that case. She has great characters here, even possibly a great storyline, but is not able to tell the story.

RULES is an excellent book; Brookner an excellent writer--in fact, I find all her books except HOTEL DU LAC excellent; there is no better way to reflect on life than to read Brookner's books. If I could give RULES more stars to better its overall rating I would.

Anita Brookner writes in a style that harkens back to Henry James: so much of her prose is icy, matter-of-fact and at times clinical. But Brookner makes the fatal error of adopting the Jamesian style without having his facility at storytelling and his mastery of prose writing.
Though the story of "The Rules of Engagement" takes place in London in the Swinging 1960's through the 1980's, when Brookner makes a reference to those times...discos, Art, etc, it is shocking because her story is so much of a time, and that time is the early 1900's.
Elizabeth is an old fashioned girl: one who cleaves to her husband, a much older man and to her friend Betsy with whom she shares a relationship more akin to that of a mother-daughter than one of friends. When she meets Betsy's lover, Daniel she finds him "repellent...his humming deprived him of ordinary accessibility and removed any possibility of normal exchange of the kind practiced in the circles in which I moved."
Against all normal logic, Elizabeth takes a lover, Edmund in whom she invests not only her time but her so-called emergence as a person: "a self which had been obscured by the years of careful living which I could now see for what they had been: erroneous, fallacious, and with a stifling quality I was ready to condemn unreservedly." Unfortunately, Brookner sees fit to give Edmund to Betsy and leaves Elizabeth in a lurch she seemingly recovers from without much effort: "in short he (Edmund) lent some of his own glamorous freedom from the pangs of conscience, and I took this as further proof that I have matured in a way that not hitherto been possible."
Talk about making a silk purse out of a sow's ear!
"The Rules of Engagement" is supposedly about relationships: those with our mates, our lovers and our friends but it is written in such a bloodless manner that, instead of being moved by these people, we merely snigger at their stupidity and their inability to make any real connection to each other or to us.