Synopses & Reviews
In
Undue Influence, acclaimed novelist Anita Brookner proves once again that even in the most closely circumscribed of lives, hearts can venture into unknown-and potentially explosive-territory.
Claire Pitt is nothing if not a practical young woman, living a life in contemporary London that is to all appearances placid, orderly and consciously lacking in surprise. And yet Claire's tangled interior life gives the lie to that illusion. She is prone to vivid speculation about the lives of others, and to fantasies about her own fate that lead her into a courtship so strange that even she wonders at its power to compel her. Martin Gibson and his chronically ill wife Cynthia come to depend on Claire to an extent that is nothing short of baffling, and yet Claire becomes ever bolder in her pursuit of their acquaintance-and, ultimately, of Martin's elusive affections. The result, a potent tale of urban loneliness and the chance intersections that assuage it, constitutes one of Brookner's finest and most psychologically acute achievements.
Review
"'The scheming restless gods of Olympus, preoccupied by their love affairs, seemed to me a far more accurate reflection of the world as we know it, than a deity who purports to be benevolent but who is in fact indifferent, unreachable, at least by those who feel they have no claim other than their own human need.' This observation of the protagonist of Brookner's novel, a young woman who works in a bookshop, is a clue to the fact that her books are about more than the seemingly empty lives of ordinary people, for they are deep meditations, of universal significance, on human existence. Typically excellent, this grave, slow-paced, and beautifully wrought novel is often wry and wise. It will not disappoint truly attentive readers." Reviewed by Andrew Witmer, Virginia Quarterly Review (Copyright 2006 Virginia Quarterly Review)
About the Author
Anita Brookner is the author of nineteen finely crafted novels, including Falling Slowly, Visitors, and Hotel du Lac, which won the Booker Prize. An international authority on eighteenth-century painting, she became the first female Slade Professor at Cambridge University. She lives in London.
From the Hardcover edition.