Dolly

Rating:
Summary: Those boring Brits!
Review: Brookner has an amazing style - she is able to draw you in to a suffocating world of stultifying decorum and actually make you (sort of) enjoy it. As far as I can tell there is no sex in the Brookner world - although there's an awful lot of attempted seductions. Here it's Dolly as the seductress and a pretty unattractive spectacle she is - selfish to the extreme and completely incapable of any sort of empathy. The book is written from the 18-yr old Jane's point of view, but she seems awfully mature for her age. With her brash youth one wishes that she could just tell Dolly precisely what she thinks of her instead of making perpetual excuses. The trip to Bournemouth is the last straw - Dolly uses Jane just to get a ticket, then drops her the moment they arrive! That is what makes the end so touching and surprising - one sees that Jane has a very big heart and an appreciation for those people who are her exact opposite (and how many of us can claim that virtue!). I heard this on audio in an absolutely brilliant reading by Fiona Shaw - her enunciation is superb and she really gets to the depth of each scene. Mrs B could not have asked for a better reader! Brookner really captures British middle class society in all its wooden stolidity!

Rating:
Summary: Every Family Has one
Review: For years this novel has intrigued me. It is a wonderfully written insight into the sort of relationships that many of us have little understanding of and I was thus not surprised to close it for the first time and ask, "why?". Several years have gone by and I adore the novel no less as I understand its message far better

The novel offers so much in the definitions and boundaries of love and family. After all, I keep asking, why else would Jane go to so much trouble to make Dolly's life happier? Because she loves her; because Dolly has managed over the course of decades to move from the peripheral boundaries of the family to one of the few people who Jane has left in her life, and vice versa. The novel might be of a great help in anyone trying to conceptualise "family" -- the structure, boundaries, applications -- everything. This is a quiet, powerful novel whose role will, I hope, be realised in the years to come as the family structure continues to evolve.

Rating:
Summary: Brookner's Tasty Treat
Review: If this novel were a pizza divided into quarters, the hungry reader would likely be put off by the first three wedges, which are relatively dry and tasteless: a tedious description of characters who seem to be nothing but complex family fossils. One might exclaim during these pages: "These people are like biplanes going nowhere at elephant speed, and with (oh no!) an infinite supply of nuclear fuel on board!" But the last wedge is a winner, and loaded with fancy tidbits to tempt the most jaded gourmet reader. Here questions arise and sparkle like bubbles breaking over the surface of a glass of good champagne: Why are these folks so bent on finding nothing in the chock-full treasure chest of life? What makes Dolly as mean as a cobra on speed? What is the source of Jane Manning's sympathy, her Santa Claus-like generosity? Anita Brookner raises many issues here, and they flutter like colorful banners in the breeze issuing forth from the dramatic conclusion to this novel. One such: what is the source of our obligations to others? And: do we have the courage to follow these clues to their unsettling ends? Some advice: unplug your phone and read this book through in one fun sitting. "Dolly" is as shocking as a South Dakota cyclone.

Rating:
Summary: stick with it
Review: The beginning of this novel was difficult, dry and slow-paced. It struck me at first as one of Anita Brookner's less successful efforts, a novel that made me understand why she has her detractors. But I kept reading and am glad I did.

The ending is powerful, disturbing and shocking, pulling the slow opening into focus. The psychological nuances are eerie, yet we know as the story ends that they're not only possible, but true. This is one of those books that makes the implausible absolutely true and inevitable. Dolly is a tale of love and symbiosis and as elegant and frightening as the work of Henry James.

Rating:
Summary: stick with it
Review: The beginning of this novel was difficult, dry and slow-paced. It struck me at first as one of Anita Brookner's less successful efforts, a novel that made me understand why she has her detractors. But I kept reading and am glad I did.

The ending is powerful, disturbing and shocking, pulling the slow opening into focus. The psychological nuances are eerie, yet we know as the story ends that they're not only possible, but true. This is one of those books that makes the implausible absolutely true and inevitable. Dolly is a tale of love and symbiosis and as elegant and frightening as the work of Henry James.