Ballard) had won in its place.” The setting of an off-season hotel makes for a melancholic atmosphere and it’s fair to say that not a great deal happens in terms of plot until the very end. Nevertheless, ‘Hotel du Lac’ is quietly subversive in its own way and underneath Brookner’s elegant turns of phrase lies some cutting humour and social analysis. Ironically, its apparent gentleness caused a fair amount of controversy – according to the Guardian, Brookner “half-apologised that her books are “quite nice but unimportant” and suggested it might have been better if Empire Of The Sun (by J. It is difficult to imagine this sort of book winning the Man Booker Prize today, and even at the time ‘Hotel du Lac’ won in 1984, it seems to have been viewed as a rather old-fashioned novel. However, it is Philip Neville, a divorced man also staying at the hotel who makes the most significant impression on the other guests. A keen people-watcher, she has some unusual encounters with various eccentric guests including a rich widow Mrs Pusey and her daughter Jennifer, as well as Monica and her dog Kiki. It tells the story of Edith Hope, a novelist of romantic fiction who is staying at a hotel near Lake Geneva in Switzerland by herself. I haven’t read many of the early winners of the Booker Prize but ‘Hotel du Lac’ by Anita Brookner is one I have been meaning to read ahead of the Golden Man Booker Prize celebrations later this year.
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