A Closed Eye

(Paperback)

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Description

Novel from the bestselling author of the Man Booker Prize-winning Hotel du Lac Naive and undemanding, Harriet Lytton expects very little of life and that is what she recieves. Married to a respectable man old enough to be her father, Harriet's only taste of passion comes when she meets Jack Peckham, the unruly, attractive husband of her friend Tessa. Tessa and Harriet have for many years been bound together by their childhood friendship and the imposed alliance of their two daughters, Imogen and Lizzie. But events conspire to shatter the gentle rhythm of Harriet's life. Tragically restrained by her own cautious choices, she faces the cruellest losses of all- those of hope and desire.

Reviews

A bravura performance * Observer *
Anita Brookner's eleventh novel is one of her best . . . She is a great writer. And her final pages, which unfold into a surprising, radiant kindness, will move you to tears. * Mail on Sunday *
The portrait of Harriet's sad, kind marriage is superb; and Harriet herself is the best Brookner heroine since Edith of Hotel du Lac. * New Statesman *
Loneliness can hardly have been better portrayed . . . This is Anita Brookner at her most sombre: yet not gloomy or depressing - the writing is too good. * Financial Times *

Author Bio

Anita Brookner was born in south London in 1928, the daughter of a Polish immigrant family. She trained as an art historian, and worked at the Courtauld Institute of Art until her retirement in 1988. She published her first novel, A Start in Life, in 1981 and her twenty-fourth, Strangers, in 2009. Hotel du Lac won the 1984 Booker Prize. As well as fiction, Anita Brookner has published a number of volumes of art criticism.