Ruth Weiss is thwarted in achieving the happiness in life that she imagined was her due. The tug of familial responsibilities, loyalties and a melancholic disposition defeat her ideas of personal freedom. Ruth has fortitude nevertheless; her life as scholar and writer is an honourable one.
Anita Brookner hit the ground running with this her first novel. All her close insight of her characters' motivations and weaknesses is evident in her understated style. ( )

Een j́onge vrouw probeert de zware druk van thuis te ontvluchten. Ze gaat studeren in Parijs, waar zij uiterlijk en innerlijk sterk verandert ( )

I feel the back of this book is a bit misleading, suggesting the protagonist has a chance for a new start in life, like there might be a happy ending. But I've read Anita Brookner before so was not fooled by that. This is a perfectly observed small scale novel about Ruth Weiss and her awful family. She's trapped by life and every time she seems about to break free a little it is unsuccessful. ( )

This was Brookner's first novel. This is my second Brookner novel. How it took me this long to get to her is a question for the ages. Originally, I was going to read her books on my Kindle because the library has almost all of them on Overdrive but it's become apparent to me that I must own them all. I want to see them lined up on my shelf like I have my Barbara Pym books lined up. Not that they're all that similar. Well, maybe in a quirky, understated, Pymian sort of way. I find myself sitting with a satisfied sigh when I get to the end of each of their novels as I replay it through my mind.

This one is the story of 40 year old Ruth Weiss, a Balzac scholar who is thinking back on her life. The title would've been better if it had been A Restart in Life because that's what she had to do. After a fairly miserable childhood with parents who were nuts to say the least--- father a rare book store owner, mother a has been stage actress---Ruth goes to Paris to pursue who doctorate. She leaves her mother who rarely gets out of bed even though there is not one thing wrong with her, and her father who is dallying with another woman, and Mrs. Cutler, the housekeeper who keeps the household from falling into complete and total disarray. Just as she gets settled her own place and interests and possible lover she is forced to return home.

Brookner, like Pym, is a master of the understated, the ironic, the comic and unlike Pym, the tragic. But her wordplay is absolutely delicious:

"Then Richard would wing home to his parish and stay up for two whole nights answering the telephone to teenage dropouts, battered wives, recidivists, and alcoholics. There seemed to be no end to the amount of bad news he could absorb." (page 38)

"He's liable for the Tribunal if he don't" said Miss Howe inaccurately; she sometimes regretted that she had so little to complain about."(Page 40)

The book is littered (in a good way) with gems like these. It matters little to me if not much happens. That's not the point here. It's the incredible characters and the language. The wonderful language, the irony, the humor, the insight. Just delightful.

This book won't be for everyone but for me it was sublime and I'll be moving on to another Brookner next month. I'm reading her books in order of publication and she wrote twice as many as Pym so it'll take me twice as long as it did 2013 when I read the Pym books. ( )

I think this book is sort of an in joke for [[Balzac]] readers. I am not such a one. There are other literary references, mostly to 19th century authors I have read, but Balzac predominates and the women in his books mentioned multiple times. While the first sentence cleverly states that her life was ruined by literature, there is the burden family situation on a twenty-something that is, well, a bit more culpable. ( )