Book Review: Hotel du Lac, by Anita Brookner (1984)

British novelist Anita Brookner, 1928-2016.

Paperback cover of Hotel du Lac, first published in 1984.

I wasn’t aware of the British novelist Anita Brookner until last year, when I read her excellent Introduction to the 1988 collection The Stories of Edith Wharton. I promptly Googled Brookner and read about her fascinating career. Already a well-established art historian, Brookner published her first novel in 1981 at the age of 53. She ended up publishing more than 20 novels, and she won the Booker Prize for her 1984 novel Hotel du Lac. I made a mental note to read her fiction, and I figured, why not start with Hotel du Lac?

Hotel du Lac follows the writer Edith Hope through a sort of forced vacation at a hotel on the shore of Lake Geneva, in Switzerland. Eventually we learn why Edith’s friends have suggested that she take a trip for a while. Hotel du Lac is a record of Edith’s time at this small hotel, at the end of the tourist season, and the odd assortment of people who are still there. Brookner is an excellent writer, and Hotel du Lac is full of insightful observations about the human condition.

Such as Edith reflecting that she didn’t take enough care about her appearance: “She had failed to scale the heights of consumerism that were apparently as open to her as they were to anyone else; this could now be remedied.” (p.44) 

Another one of my favorite lines deals with how novelists see things: “Edith reflected, with some humility, that she was not good at human nature. She could make up characters but she could not decipher those in real life.” (p.72) 

While at the Hotel du Lac, Edith meets the handsome and charming Mr. Neville. (I immediately imagined the suave actor James Mason as Mr. Neville.) Neville comes off as a libertine, only interested in his own pleasure, but he has an interesting line of dialogue: “Good women always think it is their fault when someone else is being offensive. Bad women never take the blame for anything.” (p.99) 

Hotel du Lac reads like an old-fashioned novel, and indeed, it might seem to owe more of a debt to Edith Wharton than to the year it which it was published. One could argue that this gives the novel a sense of timelessness; that it isn’t wedded forever to 1984. 

Hotel du Lac was something of a surprise winner of the Booker Prize, as most prognosticators had expected the prize to go to J.G. Ballard’s historical fiction Empire of the Sun. Regardless of what type of novel you prefer, there are many pleasures to be found in Hotel du Lac.