Altered States (Vintage Contemporaries)

Rating:
Summary: Tragic Yet Tender...
Review: A literary tapestry of passion, obsession, melancholy and despair, Altered States cuts straight to the heart of the human condition. So resonant is this brutally poetic saga of innocence lost, the reader cannot help but to reflect upon her own experiences with tenderness and perhaps a degree of sorrow.

A respected attorney and co-inheritor of the law firm of Sherwood Smith, Alan Sherwood treasures his solitude and unwavering ability to keep emotional entanglements at bay. Yet, his well-developed defenses prove useless upon his encounter with the beautiful and utterly disingenuous Sarah, his niece by way of his mother's marriage. Indeed, Sarah's capabilities for emotional indifference are a cut above Alan's own.

As his obsession intensifies, Alan finds himself falling ever more deeply into the abyss until, in a moment of physical and emotional exhaustion, he surrenders. No longer able to endure the turmoil inherent within his quest for the ever-elusive Sarah, he concedes to marry Angela, a meek young woman of impeccable culinary talents with not-so-subtle domestic yearnings and a most tender soul.

It is not long before the match proves tragic for all involved.

Yet, this extraordinary novel is far more than a tale of unrequited love. Rather, it is an exploration into the depths of the human soul and its ability to endure - as well as to succumb.

Altered States is certain to touch any reader who has experienced the exploitation of her own vulnerabilities within careless hands and has seen her beloved illusions shatter beneath the harsh light of day. She may contemplate the past with tender reminiscence yet also look ahead with a fair inkling of hope for somewhere within there resides a longing to embrace those illusions once more.

Rating:
Summary: Love as Manic-Depression
Review: Alan Sherwood is Brookner's wonderful protagonist in this tale of a man who is moved by forces beyond him. Altered States is a story of conflict between the staid, rational, traditional English ways and the more universal powers of obsessive attraction. Alan places into jeopardy everything: his career, his reputation, and his self respect for the attention of one who is just slightly out of his reach for his own good. The consequences are dire and are upon him before he can retreat.

Brookner's male point of view is convincing but not flawless. Her protagonist is too observant at times, but not enough so to break credibility. This is a great read!

Rating:
Summary: a compelling psychological novel about obsession
Review: Alan Sherwood is the protagonist living an ordinary and simple existence, yet he longs for passion and excitement in his life. The novel presents this search for meaning and fulfillment in the lonely world Alan lives in. Yet, ultimately there is no meaning in life. I could strongly relate to Alan's search for excitement and passion in his life. The characters and story give this novel a strong sense of melancholy and loniness thoughout.

This is definitely a novel to be savored, but it also leaves you with a bleak sense of the future.

Rating:
Summary: a compelling psychological novel about obsession
Review: Altered States continues to haunt me two weeks after I finished it. The main character, an intelligent and prosperous British attorney, encounters a sexual obsession that has the tenacity of inexorable fate. The story is told entirely from his point of view, and it's the reader's job to decide how credible his point of view is. Brookner's writing is precise and cutting. While her conclusions about human existence are shocking, she treats her flawed characters tenderly.

I'm reminded of the old Hitchcock TV shows and of Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment. It's a short book, very much worth reading.

Rating:
Summary: Engrossing melancholy
Review: I found Altered States a verypowerful and moving novel of love,loss and despair.It conveysan aura of melancholy in thethe way the characters in the bookaccept their lot in life. The book's tale of Allen Sherwood's unhappy marriage and his persual of the elusive Sarahis both engrossing and illuminating.The one drawback I found (as mentioned in a prior review on this board)is why Allenis so drawn to Sarah since she is so flighty and unsympathetic. The writing in the book is first rate with beautifully drawn passagesof loss and seperation.Thisnovel makes me eager to read more of Anita Brookner's work.

Rating:
Summary: unique, and literary
Review: I think that the novel was over all very well written, but I wish there could have been more descriptions of Sarah. I enjoyed the way Brookner described the realtionship of the mother and son.

Rating:
Summary: Where has Brookner been for the last century?
Review: This is another attempt by Ms. Brookner to chart the vagaries of the male soul in the first person. She does a pretty good job for that stratum of stiff-upper lip Brits that she knows best - this time a "solicitor" or as we would say a "damned lawyer". Alan tries so hard to be "good" that we can almost laugh at his keeping-up-appearances missteps. To believe that a real person would shred his soul so completely simply to do the right thing is a bit much, and Ms Brookner can't quite give us the reason why. This is because the female characters with whom Alan gets involved are so utterly charmless that it is hard to see why he persists with them, let alone marries one (Angela) and pursues another (Sarah). Angela becomes so intolerable right after the marriage (and was essentially intolerable to Alan before it!) that few men would sustain the relationship. Sarah is intolerable all the way through. While she obviously provides Alan with the only decent sex he's ever had in his life, Sarah's inability to utter a single empathetic sentence would give any man pause in the pursuit of more complex interpersonal relations. Alan's pathetic adventure to Paris to meet his "mistress" is thus a foregone conclusion: it will be a disaster (and is particularly well described). The responses of the family members is quite hilarious - particularly Aubrey, representing some stereotype of the tweedy banker phenotype so beloved by British humorists - poor Alan is held responsible for his wife's miscarriage! "I say old chap, one doesn't do that sort of thing..." sanctimonious claptrap. In a way I was reminded in this book of "Damage", a much more melodramatic but paradoxically more believable tale of adultery among the brit middle class. Of course, Ms Brookner is a better writer than Ms Hart yet the literariness of "Altered States" (an unfortunate title, given that it was already taken for a markedly different work) works against it in the end. The audio tape is well read by Crossley who does a very creditable job with the voices - note there are a few unforgivable slips and aberrations with the miking in spots. Even so he must have been wishing. as did I, that Ms Brookner's publishing house would have exercised better editorial judgment over this overblown tale.

Rating:
Summary: Where has Brookner been for the last century?
Review: While I have enjoyed many of her books, this was astonishingly poorly written and sappy. She cannot decide which of her unattractive, uninteresting, self-absorbed characters to concentrate on. She is writing about modern people in present-day England, but it may as well be Victorian times; the notion that passionate sex (not true passion) will be punished through the death of the innocent (though obnoxious) spouse of the main character and their unborn child. It all has been done before--long, long before, when it would have fit the age--and much more competently. I will be wary of my next book by Ms. Brookner.