The changing face of Booker

The dining room of the real Hotel du Lac

Anita Brookner, Hotel du Lac (Jonathan Cape, 1984)

This was a wonderful little book. Sad to say, I am one of those young ladies unreasonably devoted to period English romance. Persuasion and Howard's End are among my all-time favourite novels, and I share Bridget Jones's compulsion to rewind Colin Firth's dive into the pond in the BBC's definitive adaptation of P&P. So imagine my pleasure at discovering this throwback among my old books. Hotel du Lac was published in 1984, but it takes place in the 1950s or 60s, and reminds one most strongly of Forster's A Room with a View, both in setting and tone. No one writes serious fiction of this stamp anymore, or so it seems.

Edith Hope is a marvelous heroine. She hopelessly out of step, hopelessly independent, and hopelessly true to herself, choosing to be the mistress of a man she loves instead of the wife of a man she likes (twice). We cheer her on, partly because, unlike so many other romantic leads, she is neither pretty nor charming enough to be so bold. And she writes romance novels (!), proof that she is much more passionate than people (herself included) give her credit for. 

It is noteworthy that Brookner won the 1984 Booker Prize. The event says more about the prize than the book. Despite its obvious merits, I wager that Hotel du Lac would never receive such recognition if it was published today. Over the last twenty-five years, fiction's frontiers have moved far beyond Europe, and the winningest books now wrestle with issues of colonialism, identity, migration, poverty, violence. Their protagonists skitter along the peripheries of the bourgeois world, the world in which Edith Hope, notwithstanding her quirks, is entrenched. Yes, it is arguable that Brookner's novel is a feminist re-reading of postwar, middle-class spinsterhood, but from the perspective of today's Man Booker judges, second-wave feminism is passé, even quaint. The politics of publishing and promotion have changed, and perhaps for good reason: there are new, more urgent stories to be told. But I wonder how many talented Anita Brookners are out there today, trying in vain to get published.