A Closed Eye

by Anita Brookner

Overview

In A Closed Eye, Anita Brookner explores, with compassionate insight and stylistic brilliance, the self-inflicted paradoxes in the life of Harriet Lytton, a woman whose powers of submissiveness and self-denial are suddenly tested by the dizzying prospect of sexual awakening.

In Harriers gallant struggle with the single great temptation that comes her way, Brookner creates a hauntingly flawed heroine and a study in the evasions and disappointments that make up all our lives.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780679743408
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	01/04/1993
Series:	Vintage Contemporaries
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	5.15(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Anita Brookner was born in London and, apart from several years in Paris, has lived there ever since. She trained as an art historian and taught at the Courtauld Institute of Art until 1988.

Editorial Reviews

"Anita Brookner has staked out a distinctive territory...and made it clear that she is one of the finest novelists of her generation."— The New York Times

"If Henry James were around, the only writer he'd be reading with complete approval would be Anita Brookner. A Closed Eye is [a] marvel of ease and clarity, and precision." — The New York Times Book Review

"[Brookner's] prose is famously graceful, her understanding of human nature always keen .... A Closed Eye exhibits all of her elegance, subtlety of perception, and wistful tenderness" — Newsday

"Stiletto-sharp powers of observation...[Brookner] offers amusement akin to the slightly illicit pleasure of sitting down to lunch with a clever and malicious gossip. Indiscretions will be revealed, unhappiness and tragedy hinted at, and you will be...hungry for more." — Chicago Tribune

From the Publisher

I suspect that if Henry James were around, the only writer he'd be reading with complete approval would be Anita Brookner; "A Closed Eye" is the marvel of ease and clarity and precision that Ms. Brookner's readers expect. -- New York Times

Constance Casey

Brookner portrays another repressed woman whose yearning for love is stifled in by convention. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Brookner triumphs again with this superb portrait of protagonist Harriet Lytton. Harriet, a birthmarked only child, escapes genteel poverty when she marries Freddie, her father's affluent wartime friend. In typical Brookner fashion, Harriet's sheltered existence and unawakened passions contrast sharply with her friend Tessa's short and reckless life. Harriet dotes on beautiful, spoiled offspring Imogen; while Lizzie, Tessa's plain and neglected daughter, stands silently by. Even Harriet's adulterous fantasies about Jack, Tessa's renegade husband, fail to give her fulfillment or prompt any decisive action to change the emotional status quo. Alone at the end, Harriet sits in the ``empty room'' of her life floating somewhere between life and death. With scalpel-like prose, Brookner cuts through the veneer of a life viewed through a ``closed eye'' and expertly exposes its secret pain, compromises, and betrayals. Recommended. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 11/1/91.-- Jacqueline Adams, Carroll Cty. P.L., Westminster, Md.

Library Journal