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Lewis Percy
Anita Brookner is justly famous for her elegant, almost Jamesian character studies of women poised on the threshold of life. But in Lewis Percy, she performs a remarkable leap of imaginative empathy in her portrayal of a man torn between the reassuring cloister of the library and the alluring but terrifying world of the senses, a world populated by women who persist in bewildering him.
274 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1989
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About the author
Anita Brookner
60 books649 followersAnita Brookner published her first novel, A Start In Life in 1981. Her most notable novel, her fourth, Hotel du Lac won the Man Booker Prize in 1984. Her novel, The Next Big Thing was longlisted (alongside John Banville's, Shroud) in 2002 for the Man Booker Prize. She published more than 25 works of fiction, notably: Strangers (2009) shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, Fraud (1992) and, The Rules of Engagement (2003). She was also the first female to hold a Slade Professorship of Fine Arts at Cambridge University.
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May 15, 2021
Lewis Percy was Anita Brookner’s ninth novel, placing it roughly in the middle period of her second distinguished career as a novelist. In Lewis Percy, as with her immediately previous Latecomers, Brookner ventured more fully into male characters. Also as with Latecomers, in Lewis Percy Brookner’s eponymous character bears similarities with her earlier female characters: lonely, solitary, and alone, regardless of any families, friendships, and marriages. Even when married, Lewis feels ”a shocking loneliness”. A difference is that Lewis Percy doesn’t feature émigrés or assimilated Jews; rather, Brookner casually introduces Lewis’ naïveté and casual anti-Semitism, describing his boarding-house-mate Roberta with her ”splendid Jewish teeth” and her ”marvellous greedy appetite”.
Lewis Percy is 22 years of age when the novel starts in 1959 and 38 when it ends, and he undergoes a mysterious emotional development in those intervening years. Lewis’ core belief is ”his lasting conviction that women were a congenial and compassionate sex” and he views ”his lifetime’s quest [as] the study of, and love for, women.” The Lewis of the earlier pages feels largely uninteresting, unsympathetic, and unappealing. He’s a momma’s boy, raised by his widowed, devoted, quiet, retiring mother to become a devoted, quiet, retiring man. Lewis thinks of himself as coming ”from a short line of dead people.” Much of the action, as it were, occurs among library stacks and reading tables, as Lewis researches and writes his dissertation on “The Hero as Archetype” — marvelously re-titled by his dissertation advisor as “Studies in behaviour in the nineteenth-century novel in France”, courts agoraphobic Tissy Harper, and then earns his living as an indexer. Tissy is a momma’s girl to match Lewis as a momma’s boy, and also raised by a widowed, devoted, and retiring mother. Lewis and Tissy’s marriage — with its mysterious and incompletely portrayed courtship — is a coming together of two reticent, lonely young adults, both yearning for a domestic and marital ideal but unequipped about how to effect it. Both live somehow outside of time, or at least outside of their time, until — boom! — Lewis finds unlikely love and Tissy retreats and then reveals herself as an unlikely feminist.
Lewis Percy is a confusing Brookner. It’s impossible for me to discern what Brookner intended her authorial tone to convey: comedy?; tragedy?; perhaps a tragicomedy of the sexes? Brookner treats the 1980s, Tissy and Lewis’ cramped small homes, Lewis’ modest academic environment as a target-rich environment for her mordant humor. She gives us the marvelous Arnold Goldsborough, the chief librarian and Lewis’ perpetually striving boss, always eager to move on to the newest academic fade. First Goldsborough seeks recognition as a deconstructionist and ”in his capacity as practitioner of the new criticism, he was a marauder, a manhandler, busy taking the text away from the author and turning it into something else. In Goldsborough’s hands no writing was safe. He trembled on the verge of intoxicating double meanings, inadvertences, involuntary confessions. Most of his time in the library was spent corresponding with colleagues in France, sacking the temple language and redistributing the spoils.” In Goldsborough’s next professional reincarnation, ”the new criticism had been cast aside, and the hapless artists and their letters temporarily discarded. It was the sociology of television that now claimed his attention, his devotion, even. He saw a brilliant future for himself at very little capital outlay: when not watching television he could be on it. He had jettisoned dignity as being of little use to him in these exciting times; voluptuously he threw in his lot with the lowest common denominator.” And finally Goldsborough re-invents himself as a ”professional fund-raiser. . . [in] the global village”, eagerly seeking support for library computerization.
Brookner’s always a subtle of story-teller, preferring to intimate rather than tell. Brookner only hints at Tissy and Lewis’ — how’s this? — marital relations. And Brookner only slowly reveals Pen[ry] and George’s relationship, leaving us to guess for most of Lewis Percy. Similarly, Brookner lifts the veil on Tissy’s mother relationship with the seedy Dr. Jago’s only towards the end.
Lewis Percy is tedious, slow, and freighted with emotions and ruminations. It’s also brilliant, acidic, and darkly humorous. 4.5 Brookner stars
Lewis Percy is 22 years of age when the novel starts in 1959 and 38 when it ends, and he undergoes a mysterious emotional development in those intervening years. Lewis’ core belief is ”his lasting conviction that women were a congenial and compassionate sex” and he views ”his lifetime’s quest [as] the study of, and love for, women.” The Lewis of the earlier pages feels largely uninteresting, unsympathetic, and unappealing. He’s a momma’s boy, raised by his widowed, devoted, quiet, retiring mother to become a devoted, quiet, retiring man. Lewis thinks of himself as coming ”from a short line of dead people.” Much of the action, as it were, occurs among library stacks and reading tables, as Lewis researches and writes his dissertation on “The Hero as Archetype” — marvelously re-titled by his dissertation advisor as “Studies in behaviour in the nineteenth-century novel in France”, courts agoraphobic Tissy Harper, and then earns his living as an indexer. Tissy is a momma’s girl to match Lewis as a momma’s boy, and also raised by a widowed, devoted, and retiring mother. Lewis and Tissy’s marriage — with its mysterious and incompletely portrayed courtship — is a coming together of two reticent, lonely young adults, both yearning for a domestic and marital ideal but unequipped about how to effect it. Both live somehow outside of time, or at least outside of their time, until — boom! — Lewis finds unlikely love and Tissy retreats and then reveals herself as an unlikely feminist.
Lewis Percy is a confusing Brookner. It’s impossible for me to discern what Brookner intended her authorial tone to convey: comedy?; tragedy?; perhaps a tragicomedy of the sexes? Brookner treats the 1980s, Tissy and Lewis’ cramped small homes, Lewis’ modest academic environment as a target-rich environment for her mordant humor. She gives us the marvelous Arnold Goldsborough, the chief librarian and Lewis’ perpetually striving boss, always eager to move on to the newest academic fade. First Goldsborough seeks recognition as a deconstructionist and ”in his capacity as practitioner of the new criticism, he was a marauder, a manhandler, busy taking the text away from the author and turning it into something else. In Goldsborough’s hands no writing was safe. He trembled on the verge of intoxicating double meanings, inadvertences, involuntary confessions. Most of his time in the library was spent corresponding with colleagues in France, sacking the temple language and redistributing the spoils.” In Goldsborough’s next professional reincarnation, ”the new criticism had been cast aside, and the hapless artists and their letters temporarily discarded. It was the sociology of television that now claimed his attention, his devotion, even. He saw a brilliant future for himself at very little capital outlay: when not watching television he could be on it. He had jettisoned dignity as being of little use to him in these exciting times; voluptuously he threw in his lot with the lowest common denominator.” And finally Goldsborough re-invents himself as a ”professional fund-raiser. . . [in] the global village”, eagerly seeking support for library computerization.
Brookner’s always a subtle of story-teller, preferring to intimate rather than tell. Brookner only hints at Tissy and Lewis’ — how’s this? — marital relations. And Brookner only slowly reveals Pen[ry] and George’s relationship, leaving us to guess for most of Lewis Percy. Similarly, Brookner lifts the veil on Tissy’s mother relationship with the seedy Dr. Jago’s only towards the end.
Lewis Percy is tedious, slow, and freighted with emotions and ruminations. It’s also brilliant, acidic, and darkly humorous. 4.5 Brookner stars
May 24, 2016
I didn’t intend to read another Brookner so soon but after picking up half a dozen books in a row and not finding anything that piqued my interest I decided to play it safe. And that’s the thing about Brookner—this is the sixth book I’ve read by her—she’s consistent. In some respects, if you wanted to berate her, she’s a one-trick pony but that’s something she wouldn’t have denied when she was alive (see her last interview) and yet that’s what keeps coming people back and I have no doubt I’ll be dipping into her back catalogue in a few months’ time; won’t be able to help myself.
Brookner’s an incredibly astute writer—she literally vivisects her characters before our eyes—and because she reveals so much there’s a danger in thinking her characters are equally insightful and yet that’s the thing: try as they might be—and Lewis Percy is nothing if not introspective—they fail miserably, make poor choices or often put off making any choices at all allowing Fate or circumstance to sweep them along.
When we meet Lewis it’s 1959 and he’s twenty-two. We follow him for the next sixteen years (so, until 1975) and yet with very few adjustments—basically swapping planes for ships—the action could be shifted to the end of the nineteenth century and no one would notice. Shorts skirts get commented on a couple of times, cropped hair once, jeans and a sweatshirt once but that’s about it. No mention of the Beatles, the moon landing, the assassination of JFK. Lewis is “doomed, obsolete, a relic of a forgotten species […] fatally old-fashioned.” He drifts into a marriage that anyone with an ounce of common sense would have realised wasn’t going to work and yet can’t bring himself to have an affair even when the opportunity climbs into his lap and says, “Take me. Take me.” He could not, as he puts “it in the appalling euphemism of the day, have ‘relationships.’”
Lewis is a bibliophile, the worst kind, one who “had wanted to be a character in a book and who had not managed to be one.” He spends years working on his thesis and then even more years turning it into a publishable book, dragging his feet because once it was done, what then? He wants to be a hero—his book on nineteenth-century French literature ends up being called The Hero as Archetype—but at the end he ends up wondering “what constituted heroic behaviour in those who lived in the real world and were not bound—or protected—by the conventions of literature.” Life, on every level, defeats him. I think, perhaps, that a better title for this book might have been The Defeated actually; Lewis Percy is really just a label. The words ‘defeat’ and ‘failure’ or variants thereof crop up often throughout the text and not only with regard to Lewis; at one point he refers to his wife, her mother and her mother’s lover as “these defeated people.”
A woman in the library, Tissy, catches his eye. She turns out to be twenty-seven, a few years older than him, and an agoraphobe, neither of which puts him off:
I’m sure a lot of people think about Brookner as a woman’s writer and although it’s true that the building blocks of this novel could’ve been reassembled by a romance novelist that’s not what we have here. Love is talked about but by people who really don’t have much of a clue what love is all about. Lewis, for example, reads novels by women to try to get to understand them which is probably as advisable as reading porn to understand sex. He’s fascinated by women but he really doesn’t understand them. At one point his friend’s sister—who would happily have slept with him—accuses him of reading too much to which he replies:
Brookner’s an incredibly astute writer—she literally vivisects her characters before our eyes—and because she reveals so much there’s a danger in thinking her characters are equally insightful and yet that’s the thing: try as they might be—and Lewis Percy is nothing if not introspective—they fail miserably, make poor choices or often put off making any choices at all allowing Fate or circumstance to sweep them along.
When we meet Lewis it’s 1959 and he’s twenty-two. We follow him for the next sixteen years (so, until 1975) and yet with very few adjustments—basically swapping planes for ships—the action could be shifted to the end of the nineteenth century and no one would notice. Shorts skirts get commented on a couple of times, cropped hair once, jeans and a sweatshirt once but that’s about it. No mention of the Beatles, the moon landing, the assassination of JFK. Lewis is “doomed, obsolete, a relic of a forgotten species […] fatally old-fashioned.” He drifts into a marriage that anyone with an ounce of common sense would have realised wasn’t going to work and yet can’t bring himself to have an affair even when the opportunity climbs into his lap and says, “Take me. Take me.” He could not, as he puts “it in the appalling euphemism of the day, have ‘relationships.’”
Lewis is a bibliophile, the worst kind, one who “had wanted to be a character in a book and who had not managed to be one.” He spends years working on his thesis and then even more years turning it into a publishable book, dragging his feet because once it was done, what then? He wants to be a hero—his book on nineteenth-century French literature ends up being called The Hero as Archetype—but at the end he ends up wondering “what constituted heroic behaviour in those who lived in the real world and were not bound—or protected—by the conventions of literature.” Life, on every level, defeats him. I think, perhaps, that a better title for this book might have been The Defeated actually; Lewis Percy is really just a label. The words ‘defeat’ and ‘failure’ or variants thereof crop up often throughout the text and not only with regard to Lewis; at one point he refers to his wife, her mother and her mother’s lover as “these defeated people.”
A woman in the library, Tissy, catches his eye. She turns out to be twenty-seven, a few years older than him, and an agoraphobe, neither of which puts him off:
She might be somebody he could marry, he thought, quailing at the prospect of his mother’s empty house. The thought, though idle, was sudden yet not surprising. And then he could cure her, and she would be able to go out again. Or else she could stay indoors, waiting for him to come home. It would be nice to be expected again.In the end they do marry and to a certain extent Lewis thinks of this as an end in itself:
Most men married because it was convenient, because the time was ripe. So he reasoned with himself, still aware of an old, old longing to be comforted. Passionate love affairs were not compatible with marriage. Marriage was a reasonable partnership, one that enabled a man to get on with his work.Another word that appears again and again throughout the text is ‘lonely’. In most respects Tissy proves to be an adequate wife. She’s not passionate but she accedes to his advances and never makes a fuss. She takes the house in hand and, indeed, frees Lewis to get on with his work but in time the cracks begin to show:
There was no open disagreement between them. Their routines were so established that they moved with an automatic accord through their daily lives. Sometimes it seemed to Lewis that their value to each other was as a foil for what was essentially an individual experience of solitude, which, borne alone, might strike either one of them down with intolerable perplexity: with the other there neither could feel totally abandoned. Yet for each of them a peculiar loneliness was an older, perhaps a more natural experience than companionship, and perhaps there was a recognition of the inevitable, even a rapture, in succumbing once again to this experience, which was felt to be archaic, predestined. Down they sank, through all the pretences, through the eager assumption of otherness that each had sought in marriage, down to that original feeling of unreality, unfamiliarity, with which they had first embraced the world. With this, a recognition of strangeness between them, as if each were puzzled by the continued presence of the other. From time to time there was a coming together; afterwards they took leave of each other, like partners at the end of a dance. Neither blamed the other, for there was no specific cause. But Lewis began to feel that his life was a dream from which he would presently awaken to reality.In many ways Lewis is supremely naïve—the word crops up in various forms throughout the book—even simpleminded. It’s no surprise that he ends up working in a library and he fully expects to spend the rest of his working life there thinking about writing a second volume in which “the hero enters the twentieth century. Or does he?” Lewis is no hero. He’s the book’s protagonist but he’s not its hero. He is dutiful—so that’s one step in the right direction, and honourable, another—but that’s about it.
I’m sure a lot of people think about Brookner as a woman’s writer and although it’s true that the building blocks of this novel could’ve been reassembled by a romance novelist that’s not what we have here. Love is talked about but by people who really don’t have much of a clue what love is all about. Lewis, for example, reads novels by women to try to get to understand them which is probably as advisable as reading porn to understand sex. He’s fascinated by women but he really doesn’t understand them. At one point his friend’s sister—who would happily have slept with him—accuses him of reading too much to which he replies:
Yes, I have. I see that. I’ve had unrealistic ideas, antiquated notions. All wrong – I see that too. But were the ideas wrong? Or did I just misapply them?No one expects to find much happiness in a Brookner novel—she has been called “the mistress of gloom” (as far as I can see Miranda Seymour in The Atlantic coined that one)—although sometimes there is hope and that’s how this one ends—the last sentence totally took me aback—but not certainty; that would be too much to ask. If you’ve never read her before this would be a good place to start or perhaps not; by Brooknerian standards the work’s brimming with dialogue—more than in anything else I’ve read—and, as I’ve said, it ends on an upbeat. Apart from disliking the title I can really find no fault with it.
May 3, 2012
I have become rather a fan of Anita Brookner although of the 24 novels she has written this is only the eleventh I have read. I love the mood she creates with her writing, the lonely suburbia, damp evening London streets, the senses of quiet isolation and life slipping by unremarked. Her books are fairly small, although I find her a “slow read” – books I need to take time over. I also find her extremely hard to review. This is therefore likely to be a very short review.
Most of the Brookner novels that I have read have been from a female perspective, this is only the second I have read from a male perspective. Lewis Percy is a lonely bookish academic. As the novel starts he is a student in Paris in 1959 – where after a day in the library he looks forward to going back to his rented room in a house full of women. Here he enjoys simple companionship, listening to the conversations of the other inhabitants of the house.
Lewis returns home to London, to the house he shares quietly with his mother. He knows it is an unremarkable life – but he is even then unfit for any other. When his mother dies suddenly Lewis is aware of his utter aloneness. Lewis is desperately ill-equipped for life on his own and needs someone else to take care of the day to day practicalities of running a home. First he engages a daily help – who rather begins to take over his home, but soon he starts to think more in terms of marriage. He meets agoraphobic Tissy at the library where he used to collect his mother’s books. There is no romance – they are merely beneficial to each other. The unsatisfactory nature of this marriage – and the way in which it inevitably ends is beautifully portrayed by Anita Brookner.
“He did not for a moment believe that she had left him. The suspicion began later, as the weeks passed. He thought at first for a person of Tissy’s susceptibilities pregnancy, and a late pregnancy at that was bound to be upsetting.
“He loved her in a hurt damaged way. He loved her as a child might love a broken doll, half frightened at having caused the breakage.”
At times out of step with the world he is living in Lewis must find a way to move forward and break away from his non marriage
Most of the Brookner novels that I have read have been from a female perspective, this is only the second I have read from a male perspective. Lewis Percy is a lonely bookish academic. As the novel starts he is a student in Paris in 1959 – where after a day in the library he looks forward to going back to his rented room in a house full of women. Here he enjoys simple companionship, listening to the conversations of the other inhabitants of the house.
Lewis returns home to London, to the house he shares quietly with his mother. He knows it is an unremarkable life – but he is even then unfit for any other. When his mother dies suddenly Lewis is aware of his utter aloneness. Lewis is desperately ill-equipped for life on his own and needs someone else to take care of the day to day practicalities of running a home. First he engages a daily help – who rather begins to take over his home, but soon he starts to think more in terms of marriage. He meets agoraphobic Tissy at the library where he used to collect his mother’s books. There is no romance – they are merely beneficial to each other. The unsatisfactory nature of this marriage – and the way in which it inevitably ends is beautifully portrayed by Anita Brookner.
“He did not for a moment believe that she had left him. The suspicion began later, as the weeks passed. He thought at first for a person of Tissy’s susceptibilities pregnancy, and a late pregnancy at that was bound to be upsetting.
“He loved her in a hurt damaged way. He loved her as a child might love a broken doll, half frightened at having caused the breakage.”
At times out of step with the world he is living in Lewis must find a way to move forward and break away from his non marriage
March 11, 2024
So subtle, so nuanced, just perfect.
October 17, 2024
In diesem – für Anita Brookner ungewöhnlichen Roman – begleiten wir den Studenten Lewis Percy ein Stück auf seinem Lebensweg. Warum ungewöhnlich? Es gibt hier einen männlichen Protagonisten und er ist nicht so schicksalergeben wie viele Frauenfiguren der Autorin, er versucht,
sich aus festgefahrenen Strukturen zu befreien, zögerlich zwar, aber immerhin!
Der zu Beginn etwas behäbig dahinlaufende Roman nimmt mich doch schnell für sich ein und das liegt an Anita Brookners exzellenter Schreibweise. Fein ziseliert sie die Beschreibung ihrer Personen, sehr genau und tief kennt sie ihre Charaktere. Lewis liebt es, umsorgt zu werden, bequem hat er es gern und er braucht doch auch nicht viel zu tun, alles scheint vorgezeichnet, die Uni-Karriere, das Haus, die Ehe. „ Er konnte nicht erkennen, dass man etwas von ihm erwartete, außer dass sich nichts änderte.“
Dieses passive Geschehenlassen, das stetig an ihm vorbeiziehende Leben, betrübt ihn zwar sehr und doch sieht er sich zunächst unfähig zu einer anderen, aktiveren Lebensweise.
Anita Brookner gelingt es hervorragend, dieses freud- und auswegslose Dasein zu schildern und wo es Leben zu beschreiben gibt, gibt es auch Hoffnung. Wird Lewis schließlich doch noch bereit sein für Änderungen?
Leseempfehlung nicht nur für Brookner-Fans, auch Freunde von stillen Romanen mit sehr viel Tiefgang dürften hier begeistert sein.
sich aus festgefahrenen Strukturen zu befreien, zögerlich zwar, aber immerhin!
Der zu Beginn etwas behäbig dahinlaufende Roman nimmt mich doch schnell für sich ein und das liegt an Anita Brookners exzellenter Schreibweise. Fein ziseliert sie die Beschreibung ihrer Personen, sehr genau und tief kennt sie ihre Charaktere. Lewis liebt es, umsorgt zu werden, bequem hat er es gern und er braucht doch auch nicht viel zu tun, alles scheint vorgezeichnet, die Uni-Karriere, das Haus, die Ehe. „ Er konnte nicht erkennen, dass man etwas von ihm erwartete, außer dass sich nichts änderte.“
Dieses passive Geschehenlassen, das stetig an ihm vorbeiziehende Leben, betrübt ihn zwar sehr und doch sieht er sich zunächst unfähig zu einer anderen, aktiveren Lebensweise.
Anita Brookner gelingt es hervorragend, dieses freud- und auswegslose Dasein zu schildern und wo es Leben zu beschreiben gibt, gibt es auch Hoffnung. Wird Lewis schließlich doch noch bereit sein für Änderungen?
Leseempfehlung nicht nur für Brookner-Fans, auch Freunde von stillen Romanen mit sehr viel Tiefgang dürften hier begeistert sein.
March 9, 2023
Turns out Brookner is really bad at happy endings. I wonder why she chose to present one to her male protagonist here, when all her female heroines so far have gone unrewarded for their plights.
And what a pat ending it is, complete with a weird deus-ex-machina device in the final chapters and drawn out explanatory inner monologue like she was embarrassed by her own concoction.
And what a pat ending it is, complete with a weird deus-ex-machina device in the final chapters and drawn out explanatory inner monologue like she was embarrassed by her own concoction.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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February 18, 2014Lewis Percy (1989) - Anita Brookner
Well written and affecting, yet a frustrating read for me. I waited for Lewis to grow-up and become more complete, but he just goes further into his own self created problems and only becomes more maladapted. Page after page i'd get hope up for Lewis, and then in a flash i'd be saying 'No, no! Don't do that. Why are you doing that?' Perhaps this is just realism, perhaps it's true that people don't (or rarely) change.
(I'm also disappointed to have another British story about a middle class person, with independent income and issues.)
While Lewis's motivations are good, he suffers with life issues related to attention and proportion perhaps somewhat similar to but likely not Asperger syndrome. It's hard to define exactly what leads him astray. His intelligence, attention to detail and flexibility allows him to excel with academics and literature, yet leaves him scattered and incapable in his personal life in particular in forming relationships and life goals. He conducts life as a character in a book, rather than a real existence that matters and lives with passion and devotion.
The author on occasions tries to weave in issues explicit with the Women's Liberation movement, which seems to me undeveloped and dated and extraneous to the story. It really feels like Brookner felt she needed to include this but did so somewhat as afterthought. Yet this story does deal quite specifically and realistically with gender roles and attitudes, and the effect these perspectives have on the lives of real people.
A sample from the book; Lewis and Pen are at lunch, page 212:
This [lunch] now took place in a wine bar instead of a pub, as before; they ate slices of of quiche and salad, and drank a couple of glasses of rosé. This seemed to be the approved diet of the contemporary man, although it left Lewis hungry. He was, however, so used to feeling hungry, that he was more or less resigned to the condition lasting out his lifetime, and possibly continuing beyond it. The one thing that put him off ideas of an after-life was its immateriality. This was a frivolous attitude, of which he was ashamed, but he was ashamed of so much these days, and there seemed to be no solution to any of it. Nevertheless, he hoped he was not going to develop one of those gourmet appetites that are simply an excuse for over-indulgence. He hoped he was never going to be found extolling a hill village in Provence for the quality of its mushrooms, or remembering a particularly amusing bottle of Pinot noir when he could remember practically nothing else.
'I believe I am set in my ways,' he said, spearing a slice of tomato. 'How does one avoid it? I mean, life catches up with you, takes you by surprise. Life, in fact, is not simply a series of exciting new ventures. The future is not always a whole new ball game. There tends to be unfinished business. One trails all sorts of things around with one, things that simply won't be got rid of.'
Aside: I am curious about Brookner's contrast of academic life in England and the U.S. I am not sure if this reflects reality or is just simply necessary for the plot. Any comment?
Characters: Lewis, Madame Doche, Roberta, Cynthia, Grace Percy, Andrew and wife, Professor Armitage, Tissy, Mrs Harper, the Doctor, Pen, Emmy, Mrs Joliffe and Barry, Dr Goldsborough, Jessica, Howard and Jeannine Millanship.
============
Later:
I've been remembering the strong connections this novel has with various works of fiction.
Lewis reads books from the library where Tissy works. These are all books and authors his mother has read. The things i remember now in particular are:
Elizabeth Bowen
Margaret Kennedy
George Eliot (in particular Silas Marner)
Lewis and his best friend Pen are both university librarians as well.
Well written and affecting, yet a frustrating read for me. I waited for Lewis to grow-up and become more complete, but he just goes further into his own self created problems and only becomes more maladapted. Page after page i'd get hope up for Lewis, and then in a flash i'd be saying 'No, no! Don't do that. Why are you doing that?' Perhaps this is just realism, perhaps it's true that people don't (or rarely) change.
(I'm also disappointed to have another British story about a middle class person, with independent income and issues.)
While Lewis's motivations are good, he suffers with life issues related to attention and proportion perhaps somewhat similar to but likely not Asperger syndrome. It's hard to define exactly what leads him astray. His intelligence, attention to detail and flexibility allows him to excel with academics and literature, yet leaves him scattered and incapable in his personal life in particular in forming relationships and life goals. He conducts life as a character in a book, rather than a real existence that matters and lives with passion and devotion.
The author on occasions tries to weave in issues explicit with the Women's Liberation movement, which seems to me undeveloped and dated and extraneous to the story. It really feels like Brookner felt she needed to include this but did so somewhat as afterthought. Yet this story does deal quite specifically and realistically with gender roles and attitudes, and the effect these perspectives have on the lives of real people.
A sample from the book; Lewis and Pen are at lunch, page 212:
This [lunch] now took place in a wine bar instead of a pub, as before; they ate slices of of quiche and salad, and drank a couple of glasses of rosé. This seemed to be the approved diet of the contemporary man, although it left Lewis hungry. He was, however, so used to feeling hungry, that he was more or less resigned to the condition lasting out his lifetime, and possibly continuing beyond it. The one thing that put him off ideas of an after-life was its immateriality. This was a frivolous attitude, of which he was ashamed, but he was ashamed of so much these days, and there seemed to be no solution to any of it. Nevertheless, he hoped he was not going to develop one of those gourmet appetites that are simply an excuse for over-indulgence. He hoped he was never going to be found extolling a hill village in Provence for the quality of its mushrooms, or remembering a particularly amusing bottle of Pinot noir when he could remember practically nothing else.
'I believe I am set in my ways,' he said, spearing a slice of tomato. 'How does one avoid it? I mean, life catches up with you, takes you by surprise. Life, in fact, is not simply a series of exciting new ventures. The future is not always a whole new ball game. There tends to be unfinished business. One trails all sorts of things around with one, things that simply won't be got rid of.'
Aside: I am curious about Brookner's contrast of academic life in England and the U.S. I am not sure if this reflects reality or is just simply necessary for the plot. Any comment?
Characters: Lewis, Madame Doche, Roberta, Cynthia, Grace Percy, Andrew and wife, Professor Armitage, Tissy, Mrs Harper, the Doctor, Pen, Emmy, Mrs Joliffe and Barry, Dr Goldsborough, Jessica, Howard and Jeannine Millanship.
============
Later:
I've been remembering the strong connections this novel has with various works of fiction.
Lewis reads books from the library where Tissy works. These are all books and authors his mother has read. The things i remember now in particular are:
Elizabeth Bowen
Margaret Kennedy
George Eliot (in particular Silas Marner)
Lewis and his best friend Pen are both university librarians as well.
May 26, 2021
Fans of Brookner will find this a departure for her. Her fine hand is present everywhere, of course.
SPOILER ALERT:
I was surprised by the ending but it was consistent with the protagonist's transformation. Had he gone off alone but with a new perspective, I could have been satisfied as well. I really did enjoy this book despite wanting to "wake up" Lewis with a good shake now and then throughout the reading. But he was an unusually decent fellow, wasn't he?
SPOILER ALERT:
I was surprised by the ending but it was consistent with the protagonist's transformation. Had he gone off alone but with a new perspective, I could have been satisfied as well. I really did enjoy this book despite wanting to "wake up" Lewis with a good shake now and then throughout the reading. But he was an unusually decent fellow, wasn't he?
August 23, 2013
Lewis Percy is unusual in the Brookner universe for two reasons: he's male, and he does attempt a breakout. His astonishment as he realizes he's been offered an escape hatch is immense and moving.
December 10, 2019
Very hard to rate. This is a book and character I loved to be frustrated with.
April 18, 2016
Strangely intriguing book about a self-described "dull" man, Lewis Percy, who doesn't go against the grain of anything, all the while seemingly dissatisfied with his life, through a PhD program, a job at a library after, marriage with someone who doesn't love him, a child he can't connect with, separation, and then...
October 12, 2012
Started beautifully but dragged a bit towards the end. Told entirely from Lewis's perspective (albeit in third person), I found my sympathies growing for the idealistic, child man he is at the beginning.
December 24, 2016
Good book
This author's use of words is amazing. She uses words as an artist would use a brush, painting scenes and describing feelings so vividly that one can see and come to know Lewis Percy as a real person. highly recommended for anyone who loves the English language.
This author's use of words is amazing. She uses words as an artist would use a brush, painting scenes and describing feelings so vividly that one can see and come to know Lewis Percy as a real person. highly recommended for anyone who loves the English language.
Read
February 4, 2024read for tissy, the agoraphobic perpetual-girl locked in a two-step with her mother, who is ultimately a prism through which we see aspects of lewis, his house, his mother, his own childishness refracted -- glancingly interesting fr me, but not a super substantial entry into my tiny personal encyclopedia of literary agoraphobes.
still enjoyed though, mostly for brookner's style, which is perceptive and exact. i am so firmly in my everything makes me think of a.s. byatt era, something abt the way brookner writes lewis and his quiet, mannered misogyny and his loneliness and his mediocrity is so reminiscent of byatt's roland to me, although w maybe less of her humour and startling little caresses of kindness ?
still enjoyed though, mostly for brookner's style, which is perceptive and exact. i am so firmly in my everything makes me think of a.s. byatt era, something abt the way brookner writes lewis and his quiet, mannered misogyny and his loneliness and his mediocrity is so reminiscent of byatt's roland to me, although w maybe less of her humour and startling little caresses of kindness ?
June 4, 2020
This is my first Brookner novel. I appreciated her intelligent writing and flashes of humor. Somewhere along the line though I just grew tired of Lewis, and pretty much all of the characters. The ending seemed preposterous.
May 3, 2009
This was a hard book to get into, but got some what better. It was a character study of a man in Britian. There wasn't much conversation in the book.
April 20, 2011
The same sort of sadness, and self-imposed isolation from Anita Brookner, but such an unexpected and beautiful ending!
August 26, 2011
I have to say that the eponymous hero never really came alive for me. The ending was a delightful surprise.
June 9, 2013
The usual Brookner scenario and types.
September 7, 2017
Originally read this decades ago, but love it just as much a second time through- one of my favourite Brookner novels
August 3, 2024
Fever dream vibes but not in a good way :(
May 5, 2023
(4.5 Stars)
Anita Brookner is probably best known for novels like Hotel du Lac – those exquisitely-crafted stories of loneliness and isolation, typically featuring unmarried women living quiet, unfulfilled lives while waiting for their unobtainable lovers to make fleeting appearances. However, just like its predecessor, the superb Latecomers, Lewis Percy differs from Brookner’s earlier novels in that it features a male protagonist – in this instance, the eponymous Lewis Percy. Nevertheless, it is another triumph, demonstrating that Brookner is just as adept at mining the inner lives of her male characters as she is at dissecting their female counterparts. I loved this novel’s closeted, claustrophobic mood and hope to find a place for it in my end-of-year highlights.
The novel follows Lewis from his student days in Paris in 1959 to his late thirties, some sixteen years later, by which point he remains a man out of his times – bookish, old-fashioned and emotionally befuddled.
In Paris, Lewis spends his days at the Bibliothèque Nationale, writing his thesis on the concept of heroism in the 19th-century novel, returning to his lodgings at night, where he enjoys the convivial company of his landlady, Mme Doche, and her coterie of female boarders. Having been raised in England by his widowed mother, Lewis relishes this opportunity to study other women at close quarters, treating them with a blend of curiosity, respect and ‘innocent enquiry’.
Shortly after his return to London, Lewis’ mother dies, leaving him feeling lost and cast adrift. On the advice of his cousin Andrew, Lewis hires a charlady, Mrs Joliffe, to manage the house, relieving him of the domestic duties for which he is so poorly equipped. Nevertheless, it’s a solitary life, and Lewis misses the female companionship of his Paris days, someone to alleviate the loneliness of the long evenings at home.
One day, while Lewis is returning some books to the local library, he encounters Tissy, a shy, timid assistant who remembers his mother. While Lewis is not romantically attracted to the agoraphobic Tissy, he begins to think of her as a potential wife, a suitable companion who might blossom under his protection. If nothing else, it would be nice to have a female presence around his home again – someone to anticipate his return in the evenings and alleviate his loneliness.
Nevertheless, walking home with the books under his arm, it was Miss Harper, Tissy, whose image stayed in his mind, tiny, chill, eternally distant, like something seen through the wrong end of a telescope. He had thought her quite plain.
She might be somebody he could marry, he thought, quailing at the prospect of his mother’s empty house. The thought, though idle, was sudden yet not surprising. And then he could cure her, and she would be able to go out again. Or else she could stay indoors, waiting for him to come home. It would be nice to be expected again. (p. 53)
Contrary to expectations, Tissy proves herself to be a competent manager of the household, unearthing various treasures that Lewis’ mother had previously packed away. Nevertheless, she remains emotionally distanced from Lewis, despite her quiet sense of authority around the home.
He had acquired, simultaneously, an excellent wife, whose competence he could only value and admire, and a sort of artefact, which, like the automata in The Tales of Hoffmann, came to life when he was not there. For it seemed impossible to believe that he knew all there was to know of her, and that what he did know was enough to last him for the rest of his life. (p. 98)
To read the rest of my review, please visit:
https://jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2023...
Anita Brookner is probably best known for novels like Hotel du Lac – those exquisitely-crafted stories of loneliness and isolation, typically featuring unmarried women living quiet, unfulfilled lives while waiting for their unobtainable lovers to make fleeting appearances. However, just like its predecessor, the superb Latecomers, Lewis Percy differs from Brookner’s earlier novels in that it features a male protagonist – in this instance, the eponymous Lewis Percy. Nevertheless, it is another triumph, demonstrating that Brookner is just as adept at mining the inner lives of her male characters as she is at dissecting their female counterparts. I loved this novel’s closeted, claustrophobic mood and hope to find a place for it in my end-of-year highlights.
The novel follows Lewis from his student days in Paris in 1959 to his late thirties, some sixteen years later, by which point he remains a man out of his times – bookish, old-fashioned and emotionally befuddled.
In Paris, Lewis spends his days at the Bibliothèque Nationale, writing his thesis on the concept of heroism in the 19th-century novel, returning to his lodgings at night, where he enjoys the convivial company of his landlady, Mme Doche, and her coterie of female boarders. Having been raised in England by his widowed mother, Lewis relishes this opportunity to study other women at close quarters, treating them with a blend of curiosity, respect and ‘innocent enquiry’.
Shortly after his return to London, Lewis’ mother dies, leaving him feeling lost and cast adrift. On the advice of his cousin Andrew, Lewis hires a charlady, Mrs Joliffe, to manage the house, relieving him of the domestic duties for which he is so poorly equipped. Nevertheless, it’s a solitary life, and Lewis misses the female companionship of his Paris days, someone to alleviate the loneliness of the long evenings at home.
One day, while Lewis is returning some books to the local library, he encounters Tissy, a shy, timid assistant who remembers his mother. While Lewis is not romantically attracted to the agoraphobic Tissy, he begins to think of her as a potential wife, a suitable companion who might blossom under his protection. If nothing else, it would be nice to have a female presence around his home again – someone to anticipate his return in the evenings and alleviate his loneliness.
Nevertheless, walking home with the books under his arm, it was Miss Harper, Tissy, whose image stayed in his mind, tiny, chill, eternally distant, like something seen through the wrong end of a telescope. He had thought her quite plain.
She might be somebody he could marry, he thought, quailing at the prospect of his mother’s empty house. The thought, though idle, was sudden yet not surprising. And then he could cure her, and she would be able to go out again. Or else she could stay indoors, waiting for him to come home. It would be nice to be expected again. (p. 53)
Contrary to expectations, Tissy proves herself to be a competent manager of the household, unearthing various treasures that Lewis’ mother had previously packed away. Nevertheless, she remains emotionally distanced from Lewis, despite her quiet sense of authority around the home.
He had acquired, simultaneously, an excellent wife, whose competence he could only value and admire, and a sort of artefact, which, like the automata in The Tales of Hoffmann, came to life when he was not there. For it seemed impossible to believe that he knew all there was to know of her, and that what he did know was enough to last him for the rest of his life. (p. 98)
To read the rest of my review, please visit:
https://jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2023...
November 2, 2025
This is the first book that I have read by Anita Brookner and I was taken by the way her writing and craft surrounded me and submerged me as the story progressed.
The detail and insight into the mind and feelings of our main character Lewis is as comprehensive as I can recall and I felt I knew and certainly understood her creation of this singular and solitary individual through his sheltered life.
There was certainly a dignity and a nobility almost to Lewis as he both struggled against and embraced his circumstances.
I was a little surprised that one of the main plot points of the story , how his marriage came to be was glossed over in a jump of time from being a possibility to being an established fact. Considering the rest of this book I would have found how the marriage came to be and indeed how it was planned and occurred to be both interesting and consistent with the whole of this work.
Without being transparent about the detail I was a little disappointed by the end of this story , two events which seemed out of character with the whole flow of the book were introduced late ( one) and very late (second ) and whilst I was pleased for the character of Lewis that they did happen they seemed both somewhat unlikely and jarring with the vast majority of the story so far.
The detail and insight into the mind and feelings of our main character Lewis is as comprehensive as I can recall and I felt I knew and certainly understood her creation of this singular and solitary individual through his sheltered life.
There was certainly a dignity and a nobility almost to Lewis as he both struggled against and embraced his circumstances.
I was a little surprised that one of the main plot points of the story , how his marriage came to be was glossed over in a jump of time from being a possibility to being an established fact. Considering the rest of this book I would have found how the marriage came to be and indeed how it was planned and occurred to be both interesting and consistent with the whole of this work.
Without being transparent about the detail I was a little disappointed by the end of this story , two events which seemed out of character with the whole flow of the book were introduced late ( one) and very late (second ) and whilst I was pleased for the character of Lewis that they did happen they seemed both somewhat unlikely and jarring with the vast majority of the story so far.
May 26, 2025
I’ve just finished rereading Lewis Percy, several years after my first reading. I find it a very powerful novel, very unlike Brookner’s others which tend to be centered around female central characters. She did a masterful job of depicting the life of a quiet, unassuming man who, very dependent upon his mother, loses her suddenly and suffers from loneliness and depression. This malaise leads to his making an injudicious marriage to a young woman handicapped by agoraphobia and a domineering, enabling mother. The appearance, at a dinner party, of his best friend’s sister, a lively, ‘liberated’ woman, shakes him up and makes him realize how staid, how stale, his life and marriage are. When a child comes along, his wife and mother-in-law raise the child apart from Percy, alienating themselves from him who wanted only a secure family life.
The storyline covers several years, during which Percy is largely on his own, shut out of his wife’s life, allowed to see his child only rarely. My only point of disbelief is that a man would wait so long to find solace in the arms of another woman. There is, however, a ray of hope for Percy, eventually.
The storyline covers several years, during which Percy is largely on his own, shut out of his wife’s life, allowed to see his child only rarely. My only point of disbelief is that a man would wait so long to find solace in the arms of another woman. There is, however, a ray of hope for Percy, eventually.
September 2, 2024
The old saying is that there is a lot in a name, and if nothing else Brookner has excelled herself with the name Lewis Percy. It instantly conjurs up all sorts of qualities, and none of them would include any handyman skills.
I was about forty pages in when I had to check when this novel was written, 1989 as it turns out, because it was so incrdibly old fashioned that I wouldn't have been surprised if it had turned out to be the 1920's. Lewis turns out to be one of those characters you just want to take by the shoulders, shake and scream "Wake up to yourself".
There is enough happening to keep the pages turning, and enough sly wit to keep it amusing, but unfortunately the narrative takes a turn for the worst in the last thirty pages that rendered everything just a little bit too soap opera for me. So much so it negated the enjoyment that had gone before.
Given the novel takes place from the 60's to the early 80's there is something so old fashioned and out of step with the period that renders all the points that she is trying to make redundant.
I was about forty pages in when I had to check when this novel was written, 1989 as it turns out, because it was so incrdibly old fashioned that I wouldn't have been surprised if it had turned out to be the 1920's. Lewis turns out to be one of those characters you just want to take by the shoulders, shake and scream "Wake up to yourself".
There is enough happening to keep the pages turning, and enough sly wit to keep it amusing, but unfortunately the narrative takes a turn for the worst in the last thirty pages that rendered everything just a little bit too soap opera for me. So much so it negated the enjoyment that had gone before.
Given the novel takes place from the 60's to the early 80's there is something so old fashioned and out of step with the period that renders all the points that she is trying to make redundant.
March 24, 2018
One of the most depressing book I’ve read and at one that left me infuriated with its main character to a point I had hardly felt towards à literary creation. The fact that it is very well written makes it worse of course…
We all have our limitations and reluctance in the way we live our lives but Lewis Percy must be the undisputed champion of limited ambitions and passivity. Whenever he eventually makes a move forward, it’s always very late and time seems to always fly by faster than his train of thoughts leaving him with an ever increasing handicap.
Of course, the book wouldn’t have made such an impression on me if I didn’t see a little of myself in Lewis Percy. We all are Lewis Percy! Until, like him, we leave the old Lewis Percy behind and move to Paris. Or America.
We all have our limitations and reluctance in the way we live our lives but Lewis Percy must be the undisputed champion of limited ambitions and passivity. Whenever he eventually makes a move forward, it’s always very late and time seems to always fly by faster than his train of thoughts leaving him with an ever increasing handicap.
Of course, the book wouldn’t have made such an impression on me if I didn’t see a little of myself in Lewis Percy. We all are Lewis Percy! Until, like him, we leave the old Lewis Percy behind and move to Paris. Or America.
November 29, 2021
The usual Brookner set-up: an only child with one deceased parent, and the surviving one is not well; and the protagonist works with books - in a library (again - like "Look at Me").
There are many of the same story patterns, but this time the protagonist is a man: a sensitive, idealistic man. I found the story more likeable - and I am surprised by that. And also there is a "Surprise" ending quite unlike the other books I have read so far by her.
As usual, lots of literary references - which mostly go right past me - but it's perhaps my poor education that explains why I can't get excited about this author. Although, I would note that her books are not "aging" well.
There are many of the same story patterns, but this time the protagonist is a man: a sensitive, idealistic man. I found the story more likeable - and I am surprised by that. And also there is a "Surprise" ending quite unlike the other books I have read so far by her.
As usual, lots of literary references - which mostly go right past me - but it's perhaps my poor education that explains why I can't get excited about this author. Although, I would note that her books are not "aging" well.
July 21, 2019
You only see the world through the title character's mind, and that limits perspective here. He's an only child of a wellish-off widow, and he leaves England for France to get his PhD, before returning to life as a librarian and marrying a girl who is never fully developed, as a character or person.
There's little dialogue here, and that the wife makes a big decision over an infraction that was ultimately minor seems very much like she was looking for an excuse. The ending is cheesy, a weak 3.
There's little dialogue here, and that the wife makes a big decision over an infraction that was ultimately minor seems very much like she was looking for an excuse. The ending is cheesy, a weak 3.
June 6, 2025
"His male conscience still reserved and clung to a vision of innocence for himself, although he was well aware that he had passed the age at which innocence was appropriate." (p.68)
A wonderful example of Brookner's incredible skill of capfuring in its totality the sad, slow, yet inherently funny and real existence of the suburban person.
Lewis is blind to what he really wants and what those around him want, and is stuck on the expectations of class and life imparted to him by his frail mother.
Witty, insightful and poignant. Not a plot in sight. Perfection!
A wonderful example of Brookner's incredible skill of capfuring in its totality the sad, slow, yet inherently funny and real existence of the suburban person.
Lewis is blind to what he really wants and what those around him want, and is stuck on the expectations of class and life imparted to him by his frail mother.
Witty, insightful and poignant. Not a plot in sight. Perfection!
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