Falling Slowly

by Anita Brookner

In Falling 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 each other. Painfully wise, the Sharpe sisters embody the conflicting yearnings Jane Austen delineated in Sense and Sensibility .

Genres: Fiction, Literary Fiction, British Literature, 20th Century, Novels, Adult Fiction, Family

227 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Anita 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.

Reviews

[Jan-Maat]

Oblomov and Jane Eyre.

More head than heart. In other Brookner novels I reached a point when they would have a sudden and deep emotional impact on me - like Kafka's axe for the frozen sea within us, except not so much an axe as a fretwork saw that decoratively reshaped my ribs. Maybe that is an experience that I valued and looked forward to in other Brookner novels, I certainly missed it here.

Unusually I felt that this was in addition to the portrayal of lonely people in London with non-English backgrounds a re-telling of the novel Oblomov, with elements of Jane Eyre.

At one moment one sister comes into her sister's flat and sees her talking to a man shock, horror, a strange man! The sister looks at him, Brookner uses the word 'powerful' twice, I think in one sentence, in her response to him. This I read as: ' she saw his powerful calf linked to his powerful thigh, as he powerfully turned his powerful head towards her'. Ah ha, I thought, this is our Mr Rochester. Indeed he already has a wife, in Oxford, but possibly not in an attic. Anyway an interesting arrangement, Oxford is not so far from London, one could commute, but he doesn't. Instead he has a flat in London, all the better to conduct affairs away from his wife. Thinking about the word 'powerful' , I wondered one morning, but not as I wandered why is that so attractive to the sister? Jane Eyre is a young woman without power, marriage is her only hope; but this sister has a profession , money is not an issue, she could have agency.

This line of thought led me back to the geography of the novel. Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner, that I think of her, whatever I go I am, I suppose, but honestly I don't and when I do it is because of Heine, perhaps thinking of how he describes the Englishman cursing the slower person on the pavement in front of him, this is what it means to be seen I guess? ; and I am alert to place in Brookner's novels. She tells us not just which districts of London that her characters live in, but even the street. When she describes a character visiting another, I feel that I could trace the journey on a map. I can imagine a guide taking fans on walking tours through her novels. Previous to this novel, I felt this precision was about class and status, this time I feel it's about security and certainty. Here, I know where I am, here I feel safe; but this can become enclosing, suffocating, the castle becomes a prison. The powerful figure represents a chance to escape, a reification of the transcendence the sister sought from Art in the opening of the novel. While living along a familiar and often travelled bus line, becomes at a certain point not about convenience but that one is tied down.

Geography is interesting in Brookner's novels. Her characters lived generally take place within a few London streets with the occasional breakaway to somewhere else, maybe Monaco, or Switzerland. Such escapes don't seem to work out well for the characters, but then you can't get away that easily from yourself and your baggage, mental or otherwise.

I suppose I might as well talk about Oblomov here, Oblomov dreams of other lives and big bold actions - like putting on his boots - but also of a stable and unchanging ( unchallenging) world of childhood. The two sisters are equally divided between those two poles, an idealised childhood , which significantly they didn't actually have, and a present that does not entirely satisfy them but consists of fixed movements and routines. Each in turn sees the danger for her sister and urges her to go out more, blind to the rut that they are stuck in themselves. Oblomov is cruelly lured into movement by the promise of romance and something similar happens to the two sisters here. Romance is a kind of substitute for personal change and development, in all cases the longing for immobility is too strong; although this comes for one sister in the form of an epiphany can't say that I was convinced by it personally.

This is powerfully a novel about Art, with a capital A, and possibly even also with a capital R and T too. It opens with a painting by Eugene Laloue "Place du Chalet under Snow", which may or may not be an actual picture, but seems to be typical of his oeuvre. One sister Stares at the painting, longing for transcendence mirroring the reader staring at the page. The sisters take turns telling each other that they should go out more. One, making a massive effort, makes her way to the Tate gallery and slumps on a bench facing a Turner painting until the gallery closes. For me, I have not noticed this in other Brookner novels, the symbolism was Janus faced, looking in two directions. Was this the longed for moment of transcendence, can Art be the Holy Grail, and if so, is our problem that we don't know what question to ask when it appears, and so the healing can not occur? Or is this foreshadowing, a symbol of the woman's physical decline? Of course it could be both too.

I wondered about reading generously or critically. Several other reviews mention the dialogue as particularly old fashioned. And I felt throughout that the central characters were prematurely aged, ten or fifteen years older (or more) than they were meant to be. And this in a novel from the 1990s when we learnt from the media that 100 was the new 90. The feel of London is more post war than 1990s, is this the same city as Brick Lane- an unfair comparision since the characters on Brick Lane are as geographically restricted as those on a Brookner novel just on a much smaller budget - or that Zadie Smith was writing about? Do I read this as Brookner demonstrating how out of touch and isolated her characters are, or as a sign that Brookner herself was not alert to the life going on around her?

It's a fascinating book, I notice the more I write here about it, the more I think about it. There are some nice phrases too, the parents of the two sisters are described as martyrs to marriage, just jumping back to the issue of Art in the novel, I thought of those paintings of alluring young woman about to be martyred because they would not get married. It's just another sign of the back to front, upside down world that Brookner is offering up to us readers like a little snow globe. Here, she shakes it, we read as it settles and someone finds peace.

[Kirsty · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is a slight detachment at play within Anita Brookner's Falling Slowly. The plot is rather drawn out, and it did not feel as though there were enough occurrences or character developments here to sustain a novel of this length. Very little happened, even in comparison to other, slower books of Brookner's. The characters never really came to life; I found them unrealistic, particularly toward the end of the book. The relationships drawn between them too are very bizarre, and not at all what I was expecting. Although Falling Slowly follows similar conventions to some of Brookner's other books, I did not enjoy it anywhere near as much. Whilst it is not badly written, the dialogue feels awfully dated, and it is perhaps therefore more of a 2.5 star read than a 3.

[Proustitute (on hiatus) · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

Thus far, I have been enamored by Brookner as I’ve made my way through four of her books: Look at Me, Fraud, Incidents in the Rue Laugier, and A Start in Life. This was the order in which I read them: out of order, haphazard, according to whichever I had out from the library or on the shelves at the time. 



Brookner is the sort of writer whose themes of isolation, loneliness, repression, and disappointment—albeit with an undercurrent of anger and frustration that just barely breaks the surface of her protagonists’ consciousnesses, let alone their actions—recur in her novels, sometimes maddening readers by sticking to such a theme, but I’ve been rather enjoying her repetitions and slight variations on these themes. Instead of heroines whose stories are damningly similar, I find the overlaps to be comforting, to be real, to be rooted in realities that not many writers ever dared to plumb. 

Brookner's books are about real people crushed and made complacent by the world around them, by their families, by lovers, and by themselves... and who can't relate to that?

Here, though, in Falling Slowly—which takes its title from the shipping report (“And finally Mallin Head… Falling very slowly")—Brookner appears to repeat herself within the text rather than across texts. Falling Slowly therefore reads slowly, unlike the others of hers I've read: there simply isn't a rhythm or structure into which a reader can really fall and ultimately surrender. One reviewer on Amazon said they she felt the book suffered from many false starts; I concur, and I feel as though Brookner wasn’t sure who the main protagonist was in the first 50-or-so pages.

When the story eventually becomes one of two very different, but oddly similarly conditioned, sisters (sort of like Brookner’s version of Austen’s Sense and Sensibility through the lens of James, who is mentioned many, many times here, and then finally with the frame of Villette [Jane Eyre is mentioned numerous times, almost disparagingly, but Villette not once]), it then expands further to encompass a wider cast that doesn’t quite work. In the four prior Brookner novels I’ve read, she excels on a small canvas; in fact, her books might well be read as chamber dramas that are so claustrophobic that their eminent wisdom and effect comes from centering on just two or three characters. While Falling Slowly has no huge cast of characters like Trollope or Dickens, it does suffer from repetition across the characters (perhaps as there are more here than usual), and also a structure that really feels like Brookner is, even just up to the end of the novel, feeling her way along, trying to see where the book is going. 



Don’t get me wrong: the book is devastating, perhaps more so than any others of hers that I’ve read. But it’s not a good place for one to start if one is new to Brookner. Since I’m only five books into her pretty impressive oeuvre, I’ll still say that one should begin with Look at Me to get a really good idea of Brookner’s voice, her concerns, and the echoes that can be found across her fiction. This is a four star book, given the insight and the depths her impeccable prose reaches, as always; but this is a pretty weak Brookner, hence the 3.5 star rating. Hey: if you write 24 novels in a career that begins at the age of 53, averaging one book per year, there will inevitably be some that don’t reach the heights of others. That’s the case here. However, do yourself a favor and get on the Brookner wagon. Almost everything you’ve assumed about her—at least I know that was the case for me, hence why it took me so long to even read her work, a fact I now bemoan—is terribly, terribly false.

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

I learned the word Valetudinarian (22). This is a book rich with words: exiguous (39), lugubrious (38), impervious innocent(33), viable men (32), solipsism (28), proprietary feelings (27), precipitating (27), deprecating charm (26), insouciant (26), chintz (22), dissimulate (21), dissemble(21),wistfulness (12). It reminds me of Hardy or Dickens. Anita was born in London. "Doughty" is on page 42. Then on page 101 we have intemperate, on page 103 reproaches, on p.105: venality and ludic. Importunity p. 113, erstwhile p.109, singularity p 108.

[Dan]

Among readers who have not reader many of Anita Brookner’s roughly two dozen novels, published over about thirty years, Brookner is often misunderstood as an author of depressing novels about lonely single women. Brookner’s novels are far more varied than this easy and inaccurate description. Brookner wrote about happily married couples, separated couples who happily reunite, lifelong friends devoted to each other and to their marriages, professionally renowned single women happy in their single-ness, adult parents and relatives struggling to understand and accept their adult children and younger relatives, and certainly about the lonely too. I’ve read most Brookner novels and all pack emotional punches, some more powerful and memorable than others. The most powerful emotional punches that Brookner delivers, at least to me, are the personal epiphanies of her characters, in which they suddenly reach self-understanding and understanding how others view them.

Brookner’s Falling Slowly is a late stage Brookner, published in 1998 and the eighteenth of her novels. Falling Slowly only partially gives lie to the most common misconceptions about Brookner. Yes, it’s about a single woman, a single older sister, Bernie, and a divorced younger sister, Miriam. Yes, it’s about loneliness and disillusionment. Here the middle aged Bernice, prematurely aging and intensely romantic, rues her disappeared hopes of a storybook romance: ”She longed to be relieved of the burden of feeling she had carried for so many years, her hopes of love all gone, manhandled or ignored by men with whom she had been timidly obsessed, and who had passed her over for some other woman, or rather girl, for she had been a girl herself then. She still could not believe her lack of success, though she had participated obediently in many minor adventures.”

Miriam, consigned to becoming Bernice’s caretaker, looks back on her failed marriage to an insensitive shnook, the too-early end of her affair with an appealing but chronically philandering married man, and her close friendship with another man with whom she rejects romance. But Falling Slowly is also a Brookner in which an older Miriam, battle-worn and battle-scarred, accepts her life with fortitude: ”If her courage faltered a little she accepted that this would always be the case. She sighed, standing in the flat, her briefcase in her hand. She had a long winter to survive. It would not be easy. But she saw, for the first time perhaps, that if careful attention were duly paid, it might, it could, be managed. Once again, eternal vigilance was the price of liberty. Now at last, she was ready to proceed.”

Anita Brookner is among a handful of my favorite authors, with her consistently beautiful prose, marvelous vocabulary, and surprising humor. While Falling Slowly isn’t among my favorite Brookners, it’s very, very well done, making this reader at times cringe with fellow feeling about life’s disappointments about romance and friendships.

[Robert Boyle · Rating 4 out of 5]

The usual Brookner themes and as usual, I enjoyed it. Intelligent observations on quiet, solitary lives. I can imagine some readers wondering what it's all about; others, who have such lives, or have lived part of such lives, would find it recognisable, and bleakly reassuring.

[Ron Charles · Rating 4 out of 5]

If there were a science to novel writing, Anita Brookner would be a literary microbiologist. No one's lens is more finely calibrated than hers. An artistic descendent of Henry James, she creates characters so precisely that her novels could serve as training manuals in psychological observation. Indeed, it's easy to imagine her writing in a white lab coat. Her analysis displays a kind of scientific precision that's always arresting and sometimes even witty, the way certain expert documentaries manage to make arcane subjects fascinating.

"Falling Slowly," Brookner's 18th novel, examines the carefully regulated lives of Miriam and Beatrice Sharpe, two middle-aged sisters in London who "presented a picture of maidenly rectitude." Modestly attractive, bright, and financially secure, both sisters pursue their specialties with proficiency but not any particular enthusiasm.

Beatrice struggles to maintain her youth, works sporadically as an accompanist, and reads romantic novels. "What was attractive about her," the narrator notes with typical distance, "was not her appearance but her disposability." Beatrice has spent her life waiting demurely for the right "pair of broad shoulders, of strong arms to which she might entrust her evident womanliness." Determined to wait for love, for a true romantic hero, she finds herself still alone when other women are sending their children off to college. "I don't want to rely on myself all the time," she laments, but except for her sister, no one else has met the test.

Indeed, Miriam is all too willing to sacrifice herself for her sister, though she deplores her romanticism. Cast off by a good-looking married man and then suddenly denied the love of another, Miriam abandons all thoughts of romance for herself in favor of the pain of organized loneliness. She spends her quiet days in the library, "peacefully translating contemporary novels of no particular merit into English."

Brookner is equally astute when describing the three male characters who pass unattached through the sisters' lives. With perfect pitch, she captures the subtle tones of desire and tension between Miriam and her handsome married lover. Every note of courtesy and manipulation between Beatrice and her elderly agent is carefully amplified. As Beatrice's health fails, the author listens to the reverberations of sympathy and frustration from Miriam's new boyfriend with pained concentration.

In the course of such a serious story, Brookner's wit seems even more surprising and delightful. When her characters break out of contemplation to speak to one another, they display a dry, sharp sense of humor that Brookner spends with miserly restraint.

This is a short novel in which not very much happens, but we fall slowly into an understanding of these two women that's brilliantly intricate. The story moves gracefully back and forth through time, recalling their emotionally arid parents and tracing their long-held desire for marriage, companionship, and love.

In the static present of their lives, both sisters find themselves bewildered by their solitude. One night Miriam wonders, "How has she, a not unintelligent woman in the late 20th century, when women were supposed to know everything, come to this? But her part was clear; she was committed. She would manage somehow; there was no sense in which she would be found wanting. She would go home, have a hot bath, wash her hair. And then she would go to bed, and begin her period of waiting. And no one but herself would know what it cost."

Loneliness can be a repellent subject, a shameful feeling lonely people are trained by experience to hide, but Brookner parses these thoughts without a touch of maudlin sympathy. In the process, she's produced a chillingly insightful novel.

http://www.csmonitor.com/1999/0107/p2...

[Cathy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Recently I was listening to the radio and I heard a track with distinctive guitar, and I thought: who ever this is, they have been listening to a lot of Pink Floyd. It turned out to be Pink Floyd, but a track I did not recognise. Anyway, my point here is that although I had thought I knew every Brookner novel she has written, I did not know Falling Slowly. I've read many of them, but perhaps the novels merge in your memory over time? And perhaps - when starting to read this one I could not help but think: who ever this is, they are trying very hard to write like Anita Brookner. She has a distinctive voice, that is for sure, and often Henry James is suggested as a big influence. I cannot disagree. The opening of to this novel seemed to be very much about Brookner finding a way into the story, in a very Brookner way, and it took me a while to get into the rhythm of it because I'd just read a novel with a very different style.

Brookner's characters are all over-thinkers. They brood, they ponder, over and over. Consider, reflect, remember, re-write, conclude then disregard and then conclude all over again. This is both interesting and downright annoying.

I started reading Brookner's novels way back in the 80's, as they first appeared. They appealed to me, as books concerned with quiet lives, women who struggle to find their path forward, outsiders and genteel misfits. If her characters tend toward being older, I have never considered that a problem. Indeed, my favourite Brookner characters tend to be the much older men.

This novel, which I may or may not have read previously, has it s flaws and graces. I don't think it is her best or worst. I don't think Brookner has a worst and I do consider her to be a fine writer. She is one of the writers I look to if I want a good sentence or a fine bit of prose with a melancholy air.

You know you are not going to get a 'happy ending' with Brookner steering the story. Her characters are not expecting one and as a reader you are invited instead to contemplate all the in-between moments, the light and shade, the strength in solitude, how it might be to have no money worries and lots of time to walk around London parks....

[Beth Bonini · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have been sitting here, thinking of how to begin to write about this novel, and the word "exiguous" came to mind. Not in my usual working vocabulary, for sure: my dictionary defines it as "extremely scanty" and "meager" (from the Latin exigere "to weigh").

This novel -- about two middle-aged sisters, whose narrow lives are becoming even more meager -- has, shall we say, a scanty plot. The title pretty much says it all; and the first chapter sets the tone by announcing to the reader that one of the sisters has already died. There are no surprises: it is a bleak, melancholy story from onset to ending. I would describe it as Barbara Pym territory, but told in a more Jamesian style. (As in a Henry James novel, there is a lot of elaborate explication -- lots of thinking, and very little doing.)

However, there are some truly beautiful examples of writing . . . and there were moments that I was gripped. In a strange way, I think that I would like this novel more on a second reading. It requires that you pay attention and really think about what you are reading. Not a great book, then, for those last 10 minutes before you drop off to sleep.

Brookner was once an art historian, and on several occasions she cleverly utitilizes this knowledge.
Also, she has a truly splendid vocabulary. There were several words that I wanted to look up, but I read this novel when I away for the weekend -- with no dictionary to hand. I did remember to look up "otiose" -- which means (1) indolent, (2) of no use, and (3) ineffective; futile.

I would definitely like to read more of Brookner's work, but don't visit it for "feel good" thrills.

[Sterlingcindysu · Rating 4 out of 5]

A usual Anita Brookner read, about lonely older (but not really! at the end Miriam says she's 49!) single women without families. They're self-sufficient, don't need money, live in London and are relatively healthy, but just have too much time on their hands. The usual Brookner activities (walking, reading in a park, drinking tea) are done here. Why don't any of her characters ever have an appetite and have an interest in food or cooking?

I enjoy her very slow paced books because she addresses everyone as they "fall slowly" through life. The title is taken from the shipping news on the radio that start and end the character's lives.

I'll give Miriam credit--she doesn't suffer fools gladly. She'd rather stay at home than go out and isn't apologizing for being anti-social. A trip to Paris is cut short when she realizes she'd rather be home, hours after getting off the train.

Probably not the best book to read in the depths of winter. While not depressing, Miriam is resigned to her lonely life as long as "careful attention" were paid. I think that means as long as she doesn't let herself sink into despair.

[Ali · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novel about two sisters leading quiet lives, is typical of the other Brookner novels I have read; There is a feeling of solitude and disappointment in these characters, who are middle aged, intelligent women, with only few other acquaintances. The sisters inability to talk to one another leads them to more solitude, like so many people each of them dosen't really appreciate the other. As with other Brookner novels I have read, this is written beautifully, and is poignantly touching. I enjoyed the descriptions of solitary walks in the park and the even the melocholic feeling that Anita Brookner manages to bring to her writing.

[Ro Sayer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I want to read everything by this woman. The book was delicate but brutal in its descriptions of an unfulfilled, disappointing life. It was melancholy, uplifting, offensive, and gorgeous in turns.
It seemed like one of those books that read at a certain point in life, would give a completely different impression and experience in another year.
I would have hated it in my twenties for the repetitive measure of woman's worth by the men in her life, but at 30 I've known women that fulfill these characters stereotypes and shortcomings, I grew to love these sister's and their story completely.

[Elinor · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars, rounded up to 3. I have mixed feelings about this book -- it was so beautifully written, so thoughtful, and so intelligent, that I read many sentences and paragraphs several times just to admire their beauty. On the other hand, the story about two single women falling slowly into middle age without realizing their dreams or reaching their potential was so mournful and depressing that I did not enjoy it at all. These days I want to be inspired and uplifted by fiction, or at the very least, amused. This novel did not make me feel better about humanity in general.

[June · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is not a book for everyone but deeply satisfying for anyone who likes to explore the intricate workings of mind and life between a couple of middle-aged sisters who have basically "missed the boat" in terms of having lived what society would call a normal life. Their emotionally impoverished childhood infuses who they are and how they live, but in a kind of beautiful tapestry of mutual support, understanding and compassion as they traverse their last years of life. One sister was a concert pianist and the other works as a research librarian. Very good writing but don't expect action or intricate plot.

[Sigrun Hodne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Brookner’s excellence has to do with her talent for making the invisible, the inner world of her characters, come alive on the pages. Most of her figures lead rather indistinguishable lives; they go about their doings in a quiet way, not making much fuss of anything. But underneath the well-composed exterior, something of great existential importance – the kind of things one recognizes from ones own ordinary life - is always at stake.

Ron Charles calls Anita Brookner a "literary microbiologist", which sounds about right.

Falling Slowly is not her best book, but if you find yourself to be, like me, a devoted Brookner-fan, it is worth reading!

[Till Raether · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

The central relationship between the two sisters never became quite clear nor very interesting to me. And frankly, Miriam's two love interests are interchangeable, as proven by some last minute effort from Brookner to throw in a differentiating light suit.

As I'm progressing through all of Brookner's novels, her tendency to write about 49 year old women (in the late 1990s!) as if they're in their seventies is becoming exhausting.

Salvaged by the great supporting role of a cold asparagus quiche.

[Ruthiella · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reading slowly is more like it. Ever wonder what people are thinking during their morning commute; while idly listening to someone at a cocktail party; their innermost thoughts? “Falling Slowly” attempts to give the reader a window into the lives of two middle aged sisters, dependent upon each other, after surviving an unhappy childhood. Neither have friends, only acquaintances. They don’t even seem to confide in each other. They lead dull insular lives. Brookner is worth reading for her psychological insight into people who lead dull, insular lives, but I wasn’t in the right space to appreciate this book. It put me to sleep. I much preferred “Hotel du Lac”. I read this for the "International Anita Brookner Day" to be celebrated at the website http://myporchblog.blogspot.com/ on July 16, 2011.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

Perfectly reflecting the solitary lives of the main characters, this book is sparse on physical action, but long on thoughts, feelings, desires, intentions, responses, and so on. In that sense it resembles Henry James. This kind of writing will be best appreciated by those who say, "I am my own best company."

[Gerald · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully written drama about the life of two sisters from their difficult childhood through to death. Sad and moving. I love the way Anita Brookner writes, she seems to capture the time and place, the mood, the tempo and the individual thoughts of the characters who, as a reader, you come to know intimately.

Can't wait to read more of her work.

[Ratforce]

This literary novel explores many of the same issues examined in D.H. Lawrence’s Women in Love. In both books, sisters consider the ways that love and marriage may affect their lives and happiness.

[Keri Murcray · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quiet, slow, but lovely. This type of book wouldn't necessarily be for everyone, but I enjoyed it.

[Jennie Rogers · Rating 5 out of 5]

“‘You’ve been reading too much. That was always your trouble.’”

Cold and quietly terrifying in parts but I loved it.

[Briynne · Rating 3 out of 5]

For the record, I feel really guilty about the three stars. The writing was just as good as ever in this one, but the story just made me depressed without any other redeeming emotion. I think it may be that the characters in this book were quite a bit older than those in other books I've read by Brookner. I'm not at the stage yet where reading about late middle age does much for me, and I found it difficult to connect with the sisters on whom the story centers.

However, I typically have to consult Merriam-Webster Online at least two or three times during the course of one of her books, and that is almost worth three stars alone. She's obsessed with the word "ennui", and I'm somehow incapable of holding the definition in my head for more than an hour at a time. I like feeling challenged by an author who selects the most precise word for her intention, and doesn't ever seem like she's just chucking in a word from the GRE list to see "literary". Other great words of the day from this Brookner novel: "apotheosis", "lugubrious" (isn't that the ugliest word in the English language?), and "prurient".

[Annabelle · Rating 2 out of 5]

My fourth or fifth book by Anita Brookner, and the least enjoyed. Though enjoyment may not be the first sentiment that comes to mind, if you're familiar with Brookner's characters, their circumstances, and their thought processes. We see the same wary, plain-Jane protagonist in Miriam, seemingly intent on living life in indefinite, muted shades of grayscale. Her feelings are very much kept in check, even from the reader; what should have been her occasional pockets of good fortune failed to register with me. It was equally hard to empathize with her at her at her most miserable moments, so intent was she in rebuffing any manner of sentiment, neither demanding this from others--not from her few friends: her all-too casual lover, her likeable enough ex-husband, her gregarious older sister (a relationship I felt had some undertones of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?), her sister's Leo Lermanesque manager, and regrettably, a suitable suitor, the one character who could have given her some shot at happiness and release. In her desire for emotional self-preservation, Miriam has failed to live.

[Virginia Ramsey · Rating 3 out of 5]

I returned to Anita Brookner after many years away. I used to lose myself in her prose when I was younger.

This time, now that I am much older and my own life more closely resembles that of her solitary protagonists, I found myself enjoying her writing less.

There is no question that my aging has something to do with it: but I also think that she gets a bit carried away with the analysis of her characters many contradictory feelings and impulses. She provides so much explanation that I get lost in the details and lose sight of the character.

But I appreciate that she cares for her characters and respect that she likely chose to bring them to life because she feels that characters like these have been ignored by literature. No one should be ignored by literature.

[Pearl Alexandra Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anita Brookner is adept at characterisation and I especially like the unusual cast of characters in this book. It is a story of two sisters, Beatrice, a spinster, Miriam her divorced sister, the men in their lives and sundry. It is about the ideals of love and the uncontrollable things we sometimes do to avoid loneliness.

I don't know what the title means. Do either of these sisters, fall slowly into love... or, is it meant to evoke decline, a fall from grace, or an ideal state, dreams, and slowly then into death, where our dreams, our innocence, our bodies, all eventually go?

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, I can certainly see the comparisons to Henry James in this one! I'd almost call this an homage.

I have to say, though, I question the effectiveness of such remove. People don't readily sympathize with fictional characters, particularly those characters that can be considered passive, sexually permissive, depressive, or spinsterish. Unless swept up in a narrative, people tend to distance themselves. Brookner's book, however, is quiet and very subtle. I only hope her message isn't lost on readers.

[Plch · Rating 3 out of 5]

in the end, I had to give it back to the library for a mistake and I just didn't feel like borrowing it again... really too depressing. Anyhow, I read most of it, including the end and so I consider it read :)
One word review: claustrophobic

[Nicci Carrera · Rating 4 out of 5]

Extraordinary crafting gives this book its fourth star for me. Shy of a fifth star because it's a bit of work, not exactly riveting, and it takes close attention to get it all, and probably a second reading. Maybe that shouldn't be a negative, but four stars is solid, and I do need to reserve a star in my ratings for that book that I can't put down.

The beginning and end sandwich the middle, which is a flashback about two sisters' lives. We learn through the middle how this interesting woman came to be the solitary-by-choice person she is today. In the beginning I felt sorry for her; by the end I understood her choices.

Brookner is a challenging author for me, but I always learn things. She is the master of extremely subtle thoughts, ones that I often recognize but that don't often reach the surface, if ever, except through Brookner books. There are sometimes in her books thoughts I don't understand at all, but that is rare. Most of the thoughts I do understand. For example in the beginning, the main character admires a painting in a store but if she were to buy that painting putting it in in "her environment would eliminate the very luminescence to which she was attracted." That can really happen, not just with paintings but anything we see, buy and bring home can fade into the background and its magic instantly lost. But I never really thought about it before, but it's true. Hanging in a gallery or store, the item has an appeal. Placed in our mundane environments, it is itself diminished to the mundane.

Brookner is constantly exploring the very real limits within which our personalities trap us, and sometimes the characters come to terms with them in a satisfactory way, as in this book, and sometimes not, as in the last one I read (Making Things Better).

The English culture is quite different from American, from what I can tell. At least as portrayed by Brookner, it seems far more reticent, but still what is analyzed is relevant because the insights about society and culture can also be true in the USA.

"Now she was known for her reliability, but like most reliable people, not much valued."

"...but in reality, she was in search of the ideal family, one which would welcome her, protect her feelings, love her."

"Careless, she recognized. People like that, heavily endowed with family affections were always careless, born to carelessness. While she had trained herself to be careful. That was the difference that inevitably divided them."

"She felt consternation, a retrospective embarrassment, as if she had been a gullible girl...His charm should have warned her that this was a man who did not lie awake at nights tormented by moral problems." (Ha ha! I loved that one. We would call that "entitled.")

"Max, they both knew, was not a suitor; he was a courtier, and they had no illusions that this man, or any like him, could make a genuine commitment." (The charmer who can't commit, yes we have that too.)

Brookner does an amazing job of making the characters and their families seem real.

She's also excellent at describing chronic cardiovascular failure as experienced from within rather than as observed clinically from outside. And the reasoning for the choice not to treat it is also shown. I know firsthand not everyone chooses to treat his or her cardiovascular disease. Brookner handles this experience and this choice with great subtlety.

In the end, I found the book subtle, sad, but with an ending that was sweet and very realistic. As always, I learned more about life.

[Jordan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This may be my favorite of her novels, mostly because of the intriguing allusions to Austen and Bronte; in fact, it would be worthwhile revisiting Sense and Sensibility and Jane Eyre (and Wuthering Heights, for a contrast of real life sisters) before reading Falling Slowly to see what Brookner's up to more clearly. In any event, the descriptions of psychological insights remain, as ever, the true brilliance of any of her works.