Hotel du Lac, Anita Brookner, 1984
Anita Brookner dedicated Hotel du Lac to Rosamond Lehmann and the subject matter of this, her most well-known novel, is akin to that of The Weather in the Streets by Lehmann, the first book we shared in our group. Both novels explore the mental and emotional effects of a clandestine love affair in the life of a single, independent woman in the mid-twentieth century.
In Hotel du Lac we find Edith Hope, a romantic novelist, staying in a ‘brief exile’ from home after an ‘unfortunate lapse’, the nature of which is slowly revealed as the novel progresses. Her fellow guests, some larger than life, are meticulously observed and their lives laid bare for the reader: a controlling mother, an elderly woman abandoned by her family, a gaunt woman with her dog. The lake, the weather and the landscape are also minutely observed and the combined effect of both is ethereal, cocooning and faintly claustrophobic.
The pace of this novel is languid; very little happens, but the atmosphere Brookner conjures as Edith considers her love affair, her marriage proposals, her ‘unfortunate lapse’ and another bad decision, is vivid and intense, although not without a sense of unreality, even fantasy in Edith’s contemplation of her lover. David will never leave his wife or his comfortable life for Edith and she writes long narrative letters to him that she never sends – is he real or is he an imaginary creation? That it is not entirely clear, like much else in the book which remained opaque, was oddly satisfying, and only added to the ethereal quality of this novel.