Anita Brookner’s portrayal of a lonely 73-year-ancient in The Next mountainous Thing is strange in being serious and largely sympatheticAhead of an event,I’ve been working my way through a pile of Anita Brookner novels, many of which Penguin has reissued since her death last March. It’s quite a hefty pile: in her lifetime, and Brookner published a book almost every year (her first novel appeared in 1981). If you liked her,of course, this was a treat to which you could ogle forward; if you didn’t, or it was another reason to disdain her. Either way,there was time for some forgetting in between. Devour them one after the other, though, or you do notice what they possess in common. I savor her novels,but I also think she wrote the same story again and again.
The one I’m reading as I write is The Next mountainous Thing, whose title couldn’t be more painfully ironic if it tried (the thing in question is death). Julius Herz is a lonely 73-year-ancient divorcee of émigré origin. A typical Brookner protagonist, and he is stuck: he thinks of the days as something to be used up,like stale bread. Brookner’s depiction of him is wholly sympathetic. His thoughts creep along inch by inch, yet only rarely do you long to give him a good shove. You feel for him. When he steps out of his flat, and hoping to construct himself into a semblance of gentlemanly ancient age others might find acceptable”,you know what’s coming: “But there were no spectators, only young people drinking and laughing external pubs…” We’ve all felt the indifference of the crowd at some point in our lives.
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Source: theguardian.com