Falling Slowly - Softcover

Anita Brookner has no illusions about desire--or illusion--yet she is well aware of their unrelenting power. In her 18th novel, Falling Slowly, two sisters lead lives of quiet but no less painful panic. Beatrice Sharpe, a classical accompanist who is at the end of her career and health, has long dreamed of the protection of men. Alas, what her older sister, Miriam, thinks of as a "disastrous innocence" seems to have imprisoned and defeated her. Miriam, on the other hand, who is in her late 40s and divorced, prides herself on her strategies for getting through the long London days. Her work as a translator, though not ultimately fulfilling, keeps her occupied and marginally undefeated.

Both had been taught by their parents to expect little and complain less, yet they are surrounded by a world of interconnection and privilege that is ever out of reach. The narrative offers Miriam first the possibility of passion (illicit and guilt-making) and then a chance for commitment. Since we are in Brooknerland, you can guess how this will turn out. Beatrice is considerably less fortunate. At one point, the two discuss a Colette tale. The more knowing Miriam decides that the author comes out of it better than her characters, because she's the onlooker. Beatrice, surprisingly, has the last word: "There must be some consolation for being an onlooker," she realizes. "The role is not always an enviable one." Out of such seemingly minor moments, Brookner creates a tragedy, her exquisite, controlled sentences sculpting broken lives in which control itself is the culprit. --Kerry Fried

ling Slowly, Anita Brookner brilliantly evokes the origins, nature, and consequences of human isolation. As middle age settles upon the Sharpe sisters, regret over chances not taken casts a shadow over their contented existence. Beatrice, a talented if uninspired pianist, gives up performing, a decision motivated by stiffening joints and the sudden realization that her art has never brought her someone to love. Miriam, usually calm and lucid, slides headlong into an affair with a charming, handsome--and very married--man. And as each woman awakens to the urgency of her loneliness, illness threatens to sever them both from the one happiness they have grown to count on: each other. Painfully wise, the Sharpe sisters embody the conflicting yearnings Jane Austen delineated in Sense and Sensibility.