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Hotel du Lac

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Hotel du Lac

By: Anita Brookner
Narrated by: Anna Massey
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About this listen

Into the rarefied atmosphere of the Hotel du Lac timidly walks Edith Hope, romantic novelist and holder of modest dreams. Edith has been exiled from home after embarrassing herself and her friends. She has refused to sacrifice her ideals and remains stubbornly single. But among the pampered women and minor nobility Edith finds Mr Neville and her chance to escape from a life of humiliating spinsterhood is renewed...

©1984 Anita Brookner (P)2014 Audible, Inc. Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Feel-Good Dream
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as usual the narration was excellent., though this not a book I would have picked up and read.

hotel down on your luck

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I truly wonderful modern classic so deserving of winning the Booker prize in 1984. Anita Brookner is a modern Jane Austen, her observations of human nature, the interior life of her heroine, the dowdy but proud, Edith, are perfect and her prose is exquisite. The ending is a clever twist not anticipated.
Anna Massey’s reading is wonderful: assisted by the fact she played Edith in the BBC adaptation of the novel.
I can thoroughly recommend.

Exquisite story and performance

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Was this really written as recently as 1984?
I remember reading it when I was young and inexperienced in life - I wonder what I made of it then..... Probably enjoyed the whimsical romance of it all - it seemed very popular with everyone.

However coming to it again after half a lifetime I now can't believe what stilted, dated tosh it is.
Unrealistic scenes, improbable cliched characters....astoundingly unconvincing dialogue:
"You don't love me..."
"No - I don't love you - but you have got under my guard. You have moved and touched me in a way I no longer wish to be touched...."
My Darcy - how say such a thing to such a vapid colourless heroine as poor Edith?!!
So two dimensional.....

I think this book was not written for someone like me....
I grow old, I grow old, etc, etc.

Jane Austen meets Mills & Boone

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I had long wanted to read this book and it's been an sbsolute pleasure listening to it being read by the wonderful Anna Massey. It's beautifully written. No excess. Sheet magic. Literature at last.

Perfect

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Anna Massey is always a joy to listen to. The story is full of characters beautifully described.

A very cosy tale

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