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Leaving Home
At twenty-six, Emma Roberts comes to the painful realization that if she is ever to become truly independent, she must leave her comfortable London flat and venture into the wider world. This entails not only breaking free from a claustrophobic relationship with her mother, but also shedding her inherited tendency toward melancholy. Once settled in a small Paris hotel, Emma befriends Françoise Desnoyers, a vibrant young woman who offers Emma a glimpse into a turbulent life so different from her own. In this exquisite new novel of self-discovery, Booker Prize-winner Anita Brookner addresses one of the great dramas of our lives: growing up and leaving home.
212 pages, Paperback
First published February 3, 2005
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768 people want to read
About the author
Anita Brookner
60 books664 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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Displaying 1 - 30 of 118 reviews
November 25, 2019
Set late in the 20th century in London with some sequences in Paris. Emma Roberts' father died when she was three. Her mother is a recluse who stays at home with her books. Emma cannot emulate this woman as a model in future life, she knows that, yet she has no other option.
Her self-knowledge, her look back on her stilted upbringing, her account of mistakes made in early life because of this faulty early development, is heartbreaking to read about. It makes for a very moving opening, as powerful as anything I've read in Brookner.
When Emma goes to Paris to do graduate work in classical garden design, a field whose elegant symmetry becomes a metaphor for the life she hasn't lived, for the logic she seeks to impose, she morphs into an evaluator of her own and others' motives. Her assessments are honest, but no less cutting for that:
The paradox of Emma Roberts' character is that even though she can see the deficiencies of her upbringing, she cannot for the life of her turn that knowledge into change. She's stuck. Everyone must be allowed to run roughshod over her, as they had over her mother. She can never knowingly assert herself.
When in Paris, doing some scholarly work in the library, she makes a friend of Françoise. This friend is good at everything Emma Roberts is not. Brookner often works through contrasts like this, something she's very good at doing. Françoise is a handsome young woman adept in social situations who knows how to handle men.
There's a very deeply moving moment when Emma, at an older friend's house, goes upstairs to use the bathroom and sees the friend's younger son lying naked in bed, fast asleep.
Sadly, she never achieves even the promise of this kind of rich physical and emotional life.
Her self-knowledge, her look back on her stilted upbringing, her account of mistakes made in early life because of this faulty early development, is heartbreaking to read about. It makes for a very moving opening, as powerful as anything I've read in Brookner.
When Emma goes to Paris to do graduate work in classical garden design, a field whose elegant symmetry becomes a metaphor for the life she hasn't lived, for the logic she seeks to impose, she morphs into an evaluator of her own and others' motives. Her assessments are honest, but no less cutting for that:
The rules of the game were apparent. John Charles was the prize, Françoise the sacrifice. Mme. de Lairac wanted the house, Mme Desnoyers wanted the money.
The paradox of Emma Roberts' character is that even though she can see the deficiencies of her upbringing, she cannot for the life of her turn that knowledge into change. She's stuck. Everyone must be allowed to run roughshod over her, as they had over her mother. She can never knowingly assert herself.
When in Paris, doing some scholarly work in the library, she makes a friend of Françoise. This friend is good at everything Emma Roberts is not. Brookner often works through contrasts like this, something she's very good at doing. Françoise is a handsome young woman adept in social situations who knows how to handle men.
There's a very deeply moving moment when Emma, at an older friend's house, goes upstairs to use the bathroom and sees the friend's younger son lying naked in bed, fast asleep.
I walked up the stairs as unobtrusively as I could. The doors on the right were open. Through one I caught sight of a rumpled bed, and on it the body of a young man. Unable to prevent myself from doing so I tiptoed in. He — Mark, presumably — was fast asleep. His sleep seem to me exceptional, total, his arms flung out, his face classical in its emptiness. For a moment I contemplated him, as Psyche once contemplated Cupid, raising her lamp, willing him not to wake and witness her transgression. At the sight of his surrendered nakedness I saw what had been missing from my life. It was another coup de foudre, information received, though not knowingly given. My shock was unwitnessed, but perhaps all the more profound for that reason. I would have welcomed some sign of comprehension, even of willingness to talk, but I was alone in this discovery, and perhaps one always is. I could appreciate the virtues of taciturnity, as I could with Michael, but now I had seen what was infinitely more desirable: the arms flung out, the expression of satiety. It was only sleep, I reminded myself, but I did not see how anyone could have enough of it.
Sadly, she never achieves even the promise of this kind of rich physical and emotional life.
December 7, 2013
Some books are so wonderful that they give us the added pleasure of pressing them into friends' hands and insisting they read them, too. Sadly, the devoted fans of Anita Brookner's flawless novels don't know that pleasure. What, after all, would we say? "This story about inconsolable loneliness made me think of you -- enjoy!" She's published a novel almost every year since 1981, but the range of her audience seems as restricted as her themes. With Henry David Thoreau, she might wryly observe, "I have traveled much in Concord," having explored the whole universe in the narrow confines of a reserved, lonely heart.
Leaving Home, her new novel, does nothing to expand that realm, but those of us who love the exquisite agony of her scrutiny wouldn't have it any other way. This time around, her depressed but carefully behaved heroine is Emma Roberts, a graduate student listlessly working on a dissertation about 17th-century European gardens. Like so many despondent graduate students, she spends her days tinkering "with footnotes in an attempt to convince myself that this was a useful activity." At 26, Emma still lives at home with her mother, doesn't know what she's going to do with her life and has no promising romantic prospects.
Yes, in one sense, this is just another slacker novel -- which is weirdly hip from the 77-year-old retired art professor, but Brookner's style is so elegant and her plotting so sophisticated that you might as well call "The Turn of the Screw" just another ghost story. Besides, her protagonists never indulge in the kind of ironic self-pity that marks the slacker novel, and, despite suffering from depression so radiant that they could star in Prozac commercials, they never perceive themselves as depressed. That alone may be what gives her novels such a strange, timeless quality: They're full of sad people who have remained somehow oblivious to the age of therapy or psychotropics.
At the start of Leaving Home, Emma Roberts knows that she must break away from her mother or she will be "doomed to follow" her into a life of undisturbed stillness and solitude. It's not that Emma doesn't love her mother, a perfectly pleasant if colorless woman who encourages her daughter and makes no claims on her time or affection. But Emma is certain that "leaving home had become a necessity, although a painful one, if ever I were to find freedom." Her graduate work provides a perfectly respectable opportunity to escape, although 17th-century gardens seem a very short distance from what she wants to leave behind: "It was the classical code -- reticence, sobriety, order -- that attracted me, and I thought it would be valuable to see these qualities laid out in observable form."
She finally manages to work up the will to travel to Paris, but the soil of her mind is so dry that no wild oats can germinate. "It seemed that there was nowhere to go, and I felt as if I were in the sort of prison in which natural boundaries were observed but not indulged. I spent the rest of the day wondering how soon I could leave. This was far from the emancipation I had promised myself, and it was with a feeling of despair, which has stayed with me to this day, that I realized that I had embarked on a course of action which was in fact too difficult for me."
Brookner turns that regret a thousand different ways over the pages of this short, strangely effective novel. When her mother dies suddenly, the conditions seem ripe to finally push Emma from the nest, but the loss only increases her sense of displacement, not freedom, as she wanders back and forth between London and Paris, feeling at home nowhere. "Here was exile," she says, "but perhaps reality, a reality with which I should have to come to terms."
Desperate for companionship, she allows herself to become a kind of prop in a bossy friend's conflict with her own mother, and she pursues only the most inert men who won't violate the sense of isolation she claims to abhor. There's humor here, even social comedy -- Emma's futile search for an appropriate dress reads like Henry James channeling Bridget Jones -- but Brookner's wit is so brittle that it's surprising the pages don't shatter when turned.
All of these activities, fragmentary and brief, are just eddies in the relentless flow of Emma's introspection as she realizes, "I was now condemned to adulthood." Nothing can explain the attraction of this almost plotless novel except the extraordinary precision of Brookner's analysis -- her ability, again and again, to capture our common but private anxieties in a painful demonstration of self-reliance: "My longings were those of an adolescent," Emma says, "to be taken care of, to be nurtured, to be loved. All this I managed to conceal, as one should. It is an error to confess such needs." But it's a wonder to expose them with such cutting clarity.
Leaving Home, her new novel, does nothing to expand that realm, but those of us who love the exquisite agony of her scrutiny wouldn't have it any other way. This time around, her depressed but carefully behaved heroine is Emma Roberts, a graduate student listlessly working on a dissertation about 17th-century European gardens. Like so many despondent graduate students, she spends her days tinkering "with footnotes in an attempt to convince myself that this was a useful activity." At 26, Emma still lives at home with her mother, doesn't know what she's going to do with her life and has no promising romantic prospects.
Yes, in one sense, this is just another slacker novel -- which is weirdly hip from the 77-year-old retired art professor, but Brookner's style is so elegant and her plotting so sophisticated that you might as well call "The Turn of the Screw" just another ghost story. Besides, her protagonists never indulge in the kind of ironic self-pity that marks the slacker novel, and, despite suffering from depression so radiant that they could star in Prozac commercials, they never perceive themselves as depressed. That alone may be what gives her novels such a strange, timeless quality: They're full of sad people who have remained somehow oblivious to the age of therapy or psychotropics.
At the start of Leaving Home, Emma Roberts knows that she must break away from her mother or she will be "doomed to follow" her into a life of undisturbed stillness and solitude. It's not that Emma doesn't love her mother, a perfectly pleasant if colorless woman who encourages her daughter and makes no claims on her time or affection. But Emma is certain that "leaving home had become a necessity, although a painful one, if ever I were to find freedom." Her graduate work provides a perfectly respectable opportunity to escape, although 17th-century gardens seem a very short distance from what she wants to leave behind: "It was the classical code -- reticence, sobriety, order -- that attracted me, and I thought it would be valuable to see these qualities laid out in observable form."
She finally manages to work up the will to travel to Paris, but the soil of her mind is so dry that no wild oats can germinate. "It seemed that there was nowhere to go, and I felt as if I were in the sort of prison in which natural boundaries were observed but not indulged. I spent the rest of the day wondering how soon I could leave. This was far from the emancipation I had promised myself, and it was with a feeling of despair, which has stayed with me to this day, that I realized that I had embarked on a course of action which was in fact too difficult for me."
Brookner turns that regret a thousand different ways over the pages of this short, strangely effective novel. When her mother dies suddenly, the conditions seem ripe to finally push Emma from the nest, but the loss only increases her sense of displacement, not freedom, as she wanders back and forth between London and Paris, feeling at home nowhere. "Here was exile," she says, "but perhaps reality, a reality with which I should have to come to terms."
Desperate for companionship, she allows herself to become a kind of prop in a bossy friend's conflict with her own mother, and she pursues only the most inert men who won't violate the sense of isolation she claims to abhor. There's humor here, even social comedy -- Emma's futile search for an appropriate dress reads like Henry James channeling Bridget Jones -- but Brookner's wit is so brittle that it's surprising the pages don't shatter when turned.
All of these activities, fragmentary and brief, are just eddies in the relentless flow of Emma's introspection as she realizes, "I was now condemned to adulthood." Nothing can explain the attraction of this almost plotless novel except the extraordinary precision of Brookner's analysis -- her ability, again and again, to capture our common but private anxieties in a painful demonstration of self-reliance: "My longings were those of an adolescent," Emma says, "to be taken care of, to be nurtured, to be loved. All this I managed to conceal, as one should. It is an error to confess such needs." But it's a wonder to expose them with such cutting clarity.
December 20, 2007
I love Anita Brookner, although her books are so old fashioned. So old fashioned, in fact, that I can barely figure out which decade they are supposed to be set in. Leaving Home is almost plot free, but the language is lovely, and some of the lines you want to read again and again.
January 13, 2016
My first Brookner in years and just as good as I remembered.
February 11, 2016
“The only realistic ambition is to live in the present. And sometimes, quite often in fact, this is more than enough to keep one busy. Time, which was often squandered, must now be given over to the actual, the possible, and perhaps to that evanescent hope of a good outcome which never deserts one, and which should never be abandoned.” – Anita Brookner, “Leaving Home”
After mentioning Anita Brookner in my last two reviews, I thought there was something in me that wanted to read a Brookner Book, so I have just finished “Leaving Home.” I put “Brookner Book” in capital letters because her books certainly belong in their own genre. They are generally about a person to whom not much happens on the surface, but quite a lot happens in their heads and their cautiously buried hearts. If you find books that have almost no dialogue and no action difficult, then reading a Brookner Book will take a great exercise of will on your part. But, that being said, I am consistently surprised at how, even when I get impatient with all of the mental hand-wringing and inertia of her characters, I start to become increasingly worried for them as Brookner subtly shifts them into a crisis. You must take the word “crisis” with a grain of salt here because in a Brookner Book there will be no headstrong girl jumping off a wall (Austen’s “Mansfield Park”) or a girl with a near fatal fever (Austen’s “Sense & Sensibility”) to turn the plot on its head.
Brookner’s crises are more apt to come in the form of a dinner invitation that is unwelcome, but impossible to refuse. You might be seated next to an elderly man whose bread flies off the table and into your lap, unnoticed by everyone including the old man. You might realized, like Alex in E.M. Delafield’s “Consequences,” that you are completely unprepared for adult life, you find yourself looking for that one event that will signal your arrival onto the adult stage, only to find “it” has really never “happened.”
Brookner’s Emma, the protagonist of “Leaving Home,” is a classic Brookner character – a loner who sees other people doing the things of life – buying flats, getting married, having children, working – and can't really see how they go about getting all of that done or how they know how to do it. Emma tries to make a start on these things by leaving home, researching to write a book, even buying a flat. But she seems to be trying these activities on like you would a sweater that looks nice, but is incredibly itchy to wear.
When considering Brookner’s Emma, I think of a movie that really stars her best friend in the book, Franciose, and Emma is a side character – the nondescript friend. So what Brookner has done is to tell us the back story of that nondescript friend instead of the story of the dynamic star who falls in and out of love and is obligated to marry a wealthy family friend to save her ancestral home. It’s as though Brookner knows we’ve seen that movie of the dynamic star a hundred times, but asks “What about the woman who makes a fourth person at dinner, who will pretend she didn’t hear arguing downstairs, who doesn’t have many demands, who lets the star borrow her Paris flat, who lets bread fly into her lap, who says almost nothing at all? What is her life like?”
In “Leaving Home,” I think Brookner, like E.M. Delafiled, in “Consequences,” confronts one of the most important and potentially paralyzing questions of human life: “When are we grown up?” Whereas Delafield approaches the question with a lot of sturm un drang, Brookner approaches it very stealthily through a character who seems very boring and somewhat irritating, but who manages to reveal an almost mystical truth about always reaching toward an unknown mythical future of grown ups.
Brookner is now 87, and published her first novel at the age of 53 after she had already amassed accolades as a distinguished professor of art history at Cambridge and the Courtauld Institute of Art. She wrote an novel every year between 1981 and 2003 and she continues to write, for which her readers thank her. “Leaving Home” is one of her most recent novels.
Here is one of Brookner’s best quotes about her books, “I'm not very popular, because they're bleak and they're mournful and all the rest of it and I get censorious reviews. But I'm only writing fiction. I'm not making munitions, so I think it's acceptable.”
Leaving Home is in print and available from discerning bookshops. If they don't have it, how about asking them to order it just for you?
After mentioning Anita Brookner in my last two reviews, I thought there was something in me that wanted to read a Brookner Book, so I have just finished “Leaving Home.” I put “Brookner Book” in capital letters because her books certainly belong in their own genre. They are generally about a person to whom not much happens on the surface, but quite a lot happens in their heads and their cautiously buried hearts. If you find books that have almost no dialogue and no action difficult, then reading a Brookner Book will take a great exercise of will on your part. But, that being said, I am consistently surprised at how, even when I get impatient with all of the mental hand-wringing and inertia of her characters, I start to become increasingly worried for them as Brookner subtly shifts them into a crisis. You must take the word “crisis” with a grain of salt here because in a Brookner Book there will be no headstrong girl jumping off a wall (Austen’s “Mansfield Park”) or a girl with a near fatal fever (Austen’s “Sense & Sensibility”) to turn the plot on its head.
Brookner’s crises are more apt to come in the form of a dinner invitation that is unwelcome, but impossible to refuse. You might be seated next to an elderly man whose bread flies off the table and into your lap, unnoticed by everyone including the old man. You might realized, like Alex in E.M. Delafield’s “Consequences,” that you are completely unprepared for adult life, you find yourself looking for that one event that will signal your arrival onto the adult stage, only to find “it” has really never “happened.”
Brookner’s Emma, the protagonist of “Leaving Home,” is a classic Brookner character – a loner who sees other people doing the things of life – buying flats, getting married, having children, working – and can't really see how they go about getting all of that done or how they know how to do it. Emma tries to make a start on these things by leaving home, researching to write a book, even buying a flat. But she seems to be trying these activities on like you would a sweater that looks nice, but is incredibly itchy to wear.
When considering Brookner’s Emma, I think of a movie that really stars her best friend in the book, Franciose, and Emma is a side character – the nondescript friend. So what Brookner has done is to tell us the back story of that nondescript friend instead of the story of the dynamic star who falls in and out of love and is obligated to marry a wealthy family friend to save her ancestral home. It’s as though Brookner knows we’ve seen that movie of the dynamic star a hundred times, but asks “What about the woman who makes a fourth person at dinner, who will pretend she didn’t hear arguing downstairs, who doesn’t have many demands, who lets the star borrow her Paris flat, who lets bread fly into her lap, who says almost nothing at all? What is her life like?”
In “Leaving Home,” I think Brookner, like E.M. Delafiled, in “Consequences,” confronts one of the most important and potentially paralyzing questions of human life: “When are we grown up?” Whereas Delafield approaches the question with a lot of sturm un drang, Brookner approaches it very stealthily through a character who seems very boring and somewhat irritating, but who manages to reveal an almost mystical truth about always reaching toward an unknown mythical future of grown ups.
Brookner is now 87, and published her first novel at the age of 53 after she had already amassed accolades as a distinguished professor of art history at Cambridge and the Courtauld Institute of Art. She wrote an novel every year between 1981 and 2003 and she continues to write, for which her readers thank her. “Leaving Home” is one of her most recent novels.
Here is one of Brookner’s best quotes about her books, “I'm not very popular, because they're bleak and they're mournful and all the rest of it and I get censorious reviews. But I'm only writing fiction. I'm not making munitions, so I think it's acceptable.”
Leaving Home is in print and available from discerning bookshops. If they don't have it, how about asking them to order it just for you?
July 28, 2013
My third read for this month’s Brookner in July – and possibly my favourite of the three. I was captivated by Brookner’s beautiful prose from the first sentence.
Emma Roberts is twenty six and living a fairly claustrophobic existence with her widowed mother in a London flat. Emma realises that it is time she break free from this world which includes frequent visits from her mother’s disapproving and domineering brother. Emma is a reserved young woman, who longs to be like other young women, attending parties and having lovers, and yet she seems incapable of living such a life. Offered a scholarship to study seventeenth century garden design in Paris Emma grabs her chance. Once in Paris, Emma takes a room in a small Hotel. At the library where she goes to work, Emma meets Francoise Desnoyers, a confident worldly young woman with whom Emma soon strikes up a friendship despite their obvious differences.
“Obedient to Francoise’s instructions I moved into a small hotel, and at last began to think of myself as a citizen, though any observer could have told from my excessive compliance, my anxiety not to infringe the rules, that I was nothing of the kind. “
Francoise herself is struggling to free herself from her own mother, a traditional woman who Francoise is obliged to visit regularly at the beautiful chateau in the countryside. Francoise enlists Emma’s help in her desire to stay in Paris as long as possible, not ready quite to bury herself in the country and live the conventional life she is supposed to. Mme Desnoyers insists that Francoise should marry the wealthy son of a family friend, whose mother will then secure their future. On a weekend visit to the Desnoyers’ country home Emma sees Francoise life with her overbearing mother in a new light, giving her a more positive view of her own. Enjoying her new found freedom in Paris Emma meets Michael with whom she begins a fairly chaste relationship, although she sometimes yearns for the comforting familiarity of her home with her mother. In Francoise’s world and especially that of her mother, women are ultimately judged by the men in their lives, their father’s or their husbands. Francoise is a modern French woman, she has a love life and an easy confidence that Emma lacks, but she is her mother’s daughter and takes a pragmatic view of her future, leaving emotion out of the question. Emma is perhaps a little surprised by the similarity in their lives
So when a family tragedy requires Emma to rush back to London, it turns her life upside down. Flitting between Paris and London, and failing to find herself really at home in either place, her relationships with others all seem quite one sided. Emma wants a man in her life, likes the idea of being married, but her relationships turn more towards friendship and companionship, while Francoise ultimately rejects love, by opting for financial security. Emma struggles to find her way – not certain where home is now.
“I knew two things simultaneously: that I was unwilling to disturb my present routine, and that I was almost used to my quiet days and to the evenings when I could look forward to Philip’s company, if he were free. I knew almost superstitiously, that one should never go back, never retrace one’s steps in the hope that all would be as before, for it never is.”
Emma is not an entirely unsympathetic Brookner characters, but she is typical in her whiney introspectiveness, Emma is slightly cold, and her reserve puts her at a distance from the reader. However Brookner’s elegiac final line in this novel gives raise to some hope for her.
This really is a really lovely Brookner novel. Anita Brookner’s wonderful sense of place is again in evidence, I fairly gulped it down.
Emma Roberts is twenty six and living a fairly claustrophobic existence with her widowed mother in a London flat. Emma realises that it is time she break free from this world which includes frequent visits from her mother’s disapproving and domineering brother. Emma is a reserved young woman, who longs to be like other young women, attending parties and having lovers, and yet she seems incapable of living such a life. Offered a scholarship to study seventeenth century garden design in Paris Emma grabs her chance. Once in Paris, Emma takes a room in a small Hotel. At the library where she goes to work, Emma meets Francoise Desnoyers, a confident worldly young woman with whom Emma soon strikes up a friendship despite their obvious differences.
“Obedient to Francoise’s instructions I moved into a small hotel, and at last began to think of myself as a citizen, though any observer could have told from my excessive compliance, my anxiety not to infringe the rules, that I was nothing of the kind. “
Francoise herself is struggling to free herself from her own mother, a traditional woman who Francoise is obliged to visit regularly at the beautiful chateau in the countryside. Francoise enlists Emma’s help in her desire to stay in Paris as long as possible, not ready quite to bury herself in the country and live the conventional life she is supposed to. Mme Desnoyers insists that Francoise should marry the wealthy son of a family friend, whose mother will then secure their future. On a weekend visit to the Desnoyers’ country home Emma sees Francoise life with her overbearing mother in a new light, giving her a more positive view of her own. Enjoying her new found freedom in Paris Emma meets Michael with whom she begins a fairly chaste relationship, although she sometimes yearns for the comforting familiarity of her home with her mother. In Francoise’s world and especially that of her mother, women are ultimately judged by the men in their lives, their father’s or their husbands. Francoise is a modern French woman, she has a love life and an easy confidence that Emma lacks, but she is her mother’s daughter and takes a pragmatic view of her future, leaving emotion out of the question. Emma is perhaps a little surprised by the similarity in their lives
So when a family tragedy requires Emma to rush back to London, it turns her life upside down. Flitting between Paris and London, and failing to find herself really at home in either place, her relationships with others all seem quite one sided. Emma wants a man in her life, likes the idea of being married, but her relationships turn more towards friendship and companionship, while Francoise ultimately rejects love, by opting for financial security. Emma struggles to find her way – not certain where home is now.
“I knew two things simultaneously: that I was unwilling to disturb my present routine, and that I was almost used to my quiet days and to the evenings when I could look forward to Philip’s company, if he were free. I knew almost superstitiously, that one should never go back, never retrace one’s steps in the hope that all would be as before, for it never is.”
Emma is not an entirely unsympathetic Brookner characters, but she is typical in her whiney introspectiveness, Emma is slightly cold, and her reserve puts her at a distance from the reader. However Brookner’s elegiac final line in this novel gives raise to some hope for her.
This really is a really lovely Brookner novel. Anita Brookner’s wonderful sense of place is again in evidence, I fairly gulped it down.
December 30, 2019
Bello, ma angosciante. Per alcuni tratti mi ha ricordato me.
September 29, 2025
Emma dove stai andando davvero? È da Londra che stai scappando, da tua madre, dalla solitudine o dalle comodità di una vita semplice, circoscritta? Dall’altra parte del canale, ti aspetta Parigi: con una borsa di studio che ti permetterà appena di sopravvivere potrai studiare i giardini classici, passare le tue giornate in biblioteca stilando liste, bibliografie, prendendo appunti, facendo del lavoro accademico la tua missione, il tuo alibi per una vita ferma, in attesa di cominciare.
Ma basta modificare lo sfondo nel quale ci siamo sempre mossi per credere di essere cambiati profondamente? Per pensare di aver creato una nuova esistenza, un nuovo corso, per essere infusi di quella vitalità e di quel coraggio che abbiamo sempre attribuito agli altri e che, solo a immaginarli, ci parevano attributi mitici e incomprensibili, avvolti da un’aura di magia e mistero?
Emma sa di non essere pronta per la vita, sa di non essere pronta a diventare adulta, ad affrontare le preoccupazioni, i problemi e i pensieri che essere una donna porta con sé. La sua infanzia ritirata con una madre solitaria e meditabonda e uno zio ostile l’hanno trasformata in una ragazza riservata, incapace di affrontare le occasioni sociali, le altre persone, restia ad esprimere ciò che prova per un misto di pudore e di vergogna. Emma pensa che non ci sia davvero nulla che possa essere espresso ad alta voce, nessun sentimento, nessuna sensazione, che le correnti sotterranee dell’animo debbano rimanere tali, nascoste sotto strati e strati di apparenza e riserbo.
Alla parola, al confronto, per Emma è preferibile il silenzio, un silenzio educato e consapevole, all’interno del quale i pensieri possono viaggiare come onde ritmiche e rassicuranti. Attraverso il non detto a Emma pare di comprendere meglio i rapporti, la vita, le persone con le quali intreccia rapporti superficiali che non le regalano l’intimità e la passione che forse desidererebbe provare, ma che non sa cercare, a cui non può ambire se non in un sogno di felicità già dimenticato appena arriva il mattino.
Continua a leggere qui: https://parlaredilibri.wordpress.com/...
Ma basta modificare lo sfondo nel quale ci siamo sempre mossi per credere di essere cambiati profondamente? Per pensare di aver creato una nuova esistenza, un nuovo corso, per essere infusi di quella vitalità e di quel coraggio che abbiamo sempre attribuito agli altri e che, solo a immaginarli, ci parevano attributi mitici e incomprensibili, avvolti da un’aura di magia e mistero?
Emma sa di non essere pronta per la vita, sa di non essere pronta a diventare adulta, ad affrontare le preoccupazioni, i problemi e i pensieri che essere una donna porta con sé. La sua infanzia ritirata con una madre solitaria e meditabonda e uno zio ostile l’hanno trasformata in una ragazza riservata, incapace di affrontare le occasioni sociali, le altre persone, restia ad esprimere ciò che prova per un misto di pudore e di vergogna. Emma pensa che non ci sia davvero nulla che possa essere espresso ad alta voce, nessun sentimento, nessuna sensazione, che le correnti sotterranee dell’animo debbano rimanere tali, nascoste sotto strati e strati di apparenza e riserbo.
Alla parola, al confronto, per Emma è preferibile il silenzio, un silenzio educato e consapevole, all’interno del quale i pensieri possono viaggiare come onde ritmiche e rassicuranti. Attraverso il non detto a Emma pare di comprendere meglio i rapporti, la vita, le persone con le quali intreccia rapporti superficiali che non le regalano l’intimità e la passione che forse desidererebbe provare, ma che non sa cercare, a cui non può ambire se non in un sogno di felicità già dimenticato appena arriva il mattino.
Continua a leggere qui: https://parlaredilibri.wordpress.com/...
September 15, 2016
It takes a lot of talent to make such a dull life interesting to read about.
December 18, 2013
Brookner writes a certain type of book and this is no exception. In fact, I have to make sure I only read 1-2 of hers a year because in remembering I tend to merge all the characters together.
This would have a great book club read because of all the discussions you could have--but it would make a lousy book club read because it goes so slowly (nothing really happens at all) and most of the characters are unlikeable. Well, not unlikable but you want to give most of them a wakeup call. Ring, ring, hello, it's your life!
So check, there's a quiet, unassuming girl and her reserved widowed mother. Check, there's a small but steady cash flow so the above don't need to work. Check, the location is in both London and Paris. Check, girl acts like a doormat. Yup, it's Brookner.
Now, the discussion of the title Leaving Home could go on. There's the actual leaving home as Emma does at 27. Then, what if family leaves? Is it still home? What if you move residences? What if someone moves in your residence in your absence? Is the chateau more important than the people? Maybe home is really in your heart and you carry it wherever you go and you can never escape!
This would have a great book club read because of all the discussions you could have--but it would make a lousy book club read because it goes so slowly (nothing really happens at all) and most of the characters are unlikeable. Well, not unlikable but you want to give most of them a wakeup call. Ring, ring, hello, it's your life!
So check, there's a quiet, unassuming girl and her reserved widowed mother. Check, there's a small but steady cash flow so the above don't need to work. Check, the location is in both London and Paris. Check, girl acts like a doormat. Yup, it's Brookner.
Now, the discussion of the title Leaving Home could go on. There's the actual leaving home as Emma does at 27. Then, what if family leaves? Is it still home? What if you move residences? What if someone moves in your residence in your absence? Is the chateau more important than the people? Maybe home is really in your heart and you carry it wherever you go and you can never escape!
February 2, 2022
What I like about Brookner's books is that each is:
- essentially a bildungsroman
- and also an anti-romance
- with women being the main focus
- and take place among the educated, upper middle or very wealthy classes
- erudite and full of numerous references to art, architecture and history
- elegant in writing and composition
- good at enriching one's vocabulary
What I don't like about her novels is that each is:
- full of loneliness and mild depression
I enjoy and dislike her books at the same time with almost equal strength...
- essentially a bildungsroman
- and also an anti-romance
- with women being the main focus
- and take place among the educated, upper middle or very wealthy classes
- erudite and full of numerous references to art, architecture and history
- elegant in writing and composition
- good at enriching one's vocabulary
What I don't like about her novels is that each is:
- full of loneliness and mild depression
I enjoy and dislike her books at the same time with almost equal strength...
August 7, 2012
I get so annoyed sometimes with Brookner's characters, who are mostly ridiculously passive and ineffectual in their own lives - but then I press on and am rewarded with some of the most beguiling prose written, and I can't help but keep reading. About twice a year I read her, and she's so *not* plot driven it acts as a literary palate-cleanser.
November 4, 2009
Leaving Home by Anita Brookner (2005) is the second of her novels that I have read. In August I read and posted on A Start in Life. I loved the opening sentence of that book.
Dr Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature.
Some people, even those who enjoy reading Brookner's novels, say they are all sort of the same. The all deal with older (or prematurely aged younger people, mostly women) lonely bookish people who live cautious closed in lives. The women in both of these works have issues with their mothers. Both do research of fairly arcane academic matters, one on women in the novels of Balzac and Emma Roberts of Leaving Home studies and is writing a book about 17th century garden designs. Both spend a lot of time in libraries. Both spend a lot of time reading.
Emma, at 26, decides it is time to leave home. She leaves London to go to Paris to study. She leaves behind her mother (who spends most of her time reading) and her dominating Uncle. The family is financially comfortable but not rich. Emma meets and slowly becomes friends with a lady working in the library she frequents. Unlike Emma her new friend, about her age, more interesting looking that pretty, has men friends and a love life. She persuades Emma to move from her small apartment into a hotel, thinking she might have an opportunity to meet men that way. There are men in the library, we see their bent over gray heads.
Francoise, her new friend, is pleased to see Emma develop a friendship with a young man down the hall. In the world of Francoise women are defined by their relationships with men, be they fathers, husbands, or lovers. Emma subjects here own feelings to microanalyses but does not come to any conclusions that might direct her to a course of action. Life will start for her when she finds a man. Her ability to pursue her studies and her writings comes not from anything she has done but from money her father made in commerce. Without her father's money, we cannot quite fathom what Emma would do and for sure she would not have had the leisure time to develop the interests she did. These interests define and also limit her life. If the male professors who dominate her research field approve her work then her book will be published. Emma moves back and forth from Paris to London, each city has a strong meaning for her. Some times it feels like Emma is a character in a 19th century novel. Emma does seem to care less about what others think than an early 19th century heroine might.
The language in the book is beautiful. Some of the turns of phrase are amazing. There are some interesting plot twists. As you read this book you can feel the loneliness of Emma. In fact I thought if Emma could simply get involved in book blogging or blogs on 17th century history her life might have been much happier and then would have not been so effected by a feeling she was disconnected from the world by the seeming narrow range of her interests. Emma is involve with a very beige toned search for a suitable mate, not so much that she wants one as she wants to seem ordinary.
Anita Brookner wrote her first book at age 53 and has since then written 22 more of them. As I said, some people say all her books are alike. I would say read an extract of one of her works on line and see if the writing style appeals to you. Her books do tell us a lot about the dynamics of power in relationships and the struggle of women to define themselves. I could see myself reading one every 3 or 4 months. They do have a kind of claustrophobic feel somehow.
Dr Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature.
Some people, even those who enjoy reading Brookner's novels, say they are all sort of the same. The all deal with older (or prematurely aged younger people, mostly women) lonely bookish people who live cautious closed in lives. The women in both of these works have issues with their mothers. Both do research of fairly arcane academic matters, one on women in the novels of Balzac and Emma Roberts of Leaving Home studies and is writing a book about 17th century garden designs. Both spend a lot of time in libraries. Both spend a lot of time reading.
Emma, at 26, decides it is time to leave home. She leaves London to go to Paris to study. She leaves behind her mother (who spends most of her time reading) and her dominating Uncle. The family is financially comfortable but not rich. Emma meets and slowly becomes friends with a lady working in the library she frequents. Unlike Emma her new friend, about her age, more interesting looking that pretty, has men friends and a love life. She persuades Emma to move from her small apartment into a hotel, thinking she might have an opportunity to meet men that way. There are men in the library, we see their bent over gray heads.
Francoise, her new friend, is pleased to see Emma develop a friendship with a young man down the hall. In the world of Francoise women are defined by their relationships with men, be they fathers, husbands, or lovers. Emma subjects here own feelings to microanalyses but does not come to any conclusions that might direct her to a course of action. Life will start for her when she finds a man. Her ability to pursue her studies and her writings comes not from anything she has done but from money her father made in commerce. Without her father's money, we cannot quite fathom what Emma would do and for sure she would not have had the leisure time to develop the interests she did. These interests define and also limit her life. If the male professors who dominate her research field approve her work then her book will be published. Emma moves back and forth from Paris to London, each city has a strong meaning for her. Some times it feels like Emma is a character in a 19th century novel. Emma does seem to care less about what others think than an early 19th century heroine might.
The language in the book is beautiful. Some of the turns of phrase are amazing. There are some interesting plot twists. As you read this book you can feel the loneliness of Emma. In fact I thought if Emma could simply get involved in book blogging or blogs on 17th century history her life might have been much happier and then would have not been so effected by a feeling she was disconnected from the world by the seeming narrow range of her interests. Emma is involve with a very beige toned search for a suitable mate, not so much that she wants one as she wants to seem ordinary.
Anita Brookner wrote her first book at age 53 and has since then written 22 more of them. As I said, some people say all her books are alike. I would say read an extract of one of her works on line and see if the writing style appeals to you. Her books do tell us a lot about the dynamics of power in relationships and the struggle of women to define themselves. I could see myself reading one every 3 or 4 months. They do have a kind of claustrophobic feel somehow.
December 9, 2013
Anita Brookner is an elegant, sophisticated, analytical writer, but it's all very depressing and not enough happens to make it interesting. She writes about thoughts rather than actions, and melancholy is her forte. Her lonely, introverted, pessimistic characters do not believe happiness is possible, yet at the same time, they do not seem to pity themselves - I suppose they think it's normal to think and feel the way they do. It reminds me of a line from Goyte "You can be addicted to a certain kind of sadness."
"I was becoming increasingly unwilling to leave the flat...I marvelled at my insouciance in the cafes I had frequented in Paris, and knew that I could not replicate it here. I preferred my own company, my own solitude, although efforts were made to reduce that solitude to what others considered manageable proportions. Friends I had not seen since college, and who were now married, urged me to attend their dinner parties, dismissing my reclusion as unhealthy, unseemly, something no reasonable person could contemplate. So far I had resisted these kind invitations, but the perceived danger of even greater isolation would eventually oblige me, with a heavy heart, to comply...I would end up doing what others wanted me to do, because that was what people such as myself usually did..."
"I was becoming increasingly unwilling to leave the flat...I marvelled at my insouciance in the cafes I had frequented in Paris, and knew that I could not replicate it here. I preferred my own company, my own solitude, although efforts were made to reduce that solitude to what others considered manageable proportions. Friends I had not seen since college, and who were now married, urged me to attend their dinner parties, dismissing my reclusion as unhealthy, unseemly, something no reasonable person could contemplate. So far I had resisted these kind invitations, but the perceived danger of even greater isolation would eventually oblige me, with a heavy heart, to comply...I would end up doing what others wanted me to do, because that was what people such as myself usually did..."
March 28, 2023
In a nutshell - the slightly dramatic conclusion wasn't worth the beginning and middle sections. I'd give it 2.5 stars really, if we had the option.
Brookner can write, but Emma came across to me as so cold and self-absorbed that I really didn't care much about the fate of her narrow, over-analyzed life. I can't blame those who give up on this one. She and her "friend" Francoise are two peas in the same narcissistic pod.
REREAD MARCH 2023
I hadn't realized I read this one long ago. Now, I'll say that I get the premise that a woman doesn't need a man to be complete (fulfilled). Brookner often writes about single older women, set in a more liberated era, though the women carry expectations baggage from their youth. I stand by not finding the characters likeable this time either. Story is really for Brookner "completists" of her work. New readers should start elsewhere.
Brookner can write, but Emma came across to me as so cold and self-absorbed that I really didn't care much about the fate of her narrow, over-analyzed life. I can't blame those who give up on this one. She and her "friend" Francoise are two peas in the same narcissistic pod.
REREAD MARCH 2023
I hadn't realized I read this one long ago. Now, I'll say that I get the premise that a woman doesn't need a man to be complete (fulfilled). Brookner often writes about single older women, set in a more liberated era, though the women carry expectations baggage from their youth. I stand by not finding the characters likeable this time either. Story is really for Brookner "completists" of her work. New readers should start elsewhere.
May 4, 2020
This novel administers a strange and subtle form of CPR, doing so for hours on end. Brookner's awareness and sensitivity in carrying out such work are stunning: human, intimate, uncomfortable-- all that one might anticipate about breathing with and through another person, under her dedicated control, for an extended period of time. The novel addresses, among other things, the underacknowledged complexities and culpabilities of friendship, family, vocation, and place. What occurs is not driven by plot or clarity-- time waxes and wanes-- but it heightens being and the mental processes that substantiate late modern lives.
Read
February 5, 2009It's more of the same for Anita Brookner's 23rd novel. The Baltimore Sun calls the Booker Prize winner (for Hotel du Lac [1984]) "an acquired taste, like espresso or olives," an opinion that, for better or worse, carries through the bulk of reviews for Leaving Home. While some critics hail her new novel as another dose of the author's trademark psychological acuity, others are tired of a style that reads more like a clich_
August 8, 2007
Beautifully written, but utterly boring
September 20, 2021
This is, I think, the 5th consecutive novel I have read by Anita Brookner. I am compelled to read them because of my interest in how the spinster is represented in fiction and Brookners works are driven by Spinsters or Spinster-ish women.
My hope is always to find spinsters who break the mould of waiting to be 'rescued' by a man.
'My days as a compliant accomplice were at an end' this conclusion asserted by Emma, the protagonist of Leaving Home, one wishes that her other characters in her other novels had also asserted.
Something that is apparent on reading her works, is that they are all, really sister novels of each other and quite incestuously linked. Each female protagonist feels like they are a continuation or parallel life of the other.
Each are bound by a sense of duty, have usually nursed a parent until death and who split their time between Paris and London ,have a housekeeper and are studious or fairly ambitious.
After the death of her mother Emma decides to buy a flat in London to spare herself the unwanted visits of her antagonistic and unfriendly uncle. However, she still very much splits her time between Paris, where she is studying Gardens, and London and it becomes clear that Leaving Home isn't a simple thing but something that is fragmentary and when she is in one place, she longs to be back in the other. There is a yearning to be fulfilled with a sense of place that doesn't seem to be satiated. The restlessness she feels runs as an agitated undercurrent.
Emma, like other Brookner protagonists, is so bound by duty that she is often taken for granted and is put upon, often, because of this. Particularly because any unhappiness she has about situations that cause her frustration, she keeps pent up inside and is melancholic.
Her love interests, are portrayed to us, as vaguely so. It's almost as if her true feelings must remain secret so that when she has an uncharacteristic outburst, it comes as a surprise but also a burst of catharsis, that she is allowing herself to be heard.
This is such an effortless read, swiftly arriving at the end after shortly starting at the beginning. And Brookner creates atmosphere in a way that is indicicative of her, Immaculately full of detail. The grey slate misty skies often appear as a backdrop.
This does glide but it didn't have the impact on me that Look At Me and A Start In Life had but her work is incredibly addictive and so absolutely worth reading. My dog and cat had a complaint that Furry friends are underrepresented in her novels and I had to agree. There is such a familiarity in her works that, unlike Emma, we do feel very much at home and it's a place we long to return to.
My hope is always to find spinsters who break the mould of waiting to be 'rescued' by a man.
'My days as a compliant accomplice were at an end' this conclusion asserted by Emma, the protagonist of Leaving Home, one wishes that her other characters in her other novels had also asserted.
Something that is apparent on reading her works, is that they are all, really sister novels of each other and quite incestuously linked. Each female protagonist feels like they are a continuation or parallel life of the other.
Each are bound by a sense of duty, have usually nursed a parent until death and who split their time between Paris and London ,have a housekeeper and are studious or fairly ambitious.
After the death of her mother Emma decides to buy a flat in London to spare herself the unwanted visits of her antagonistic and unfriendly uncle. However, she still very much splits her time between Paris, where she is studying Gardens, and London and it becomes clear that Leaving Home isn't a simple thing but something that is fragmentary and when she is in one place, she longs to be back in the other. There is a yearning to be fulfilled with a sense of place that doesn't seem to be satiated. The restlessness she feels runs as an agitated undercurrent.
Emma, like other Brookner protagonists, is so bound by duty that she is often taken for granted and is put upon, often, because of this. Particularly because any unhappiness she has about situations that cause her frustration, she keeps pent up inside and is melancholic.
Her love interests, are portrayed to us, as vaguely so. It's almost as if her true feelings must remain secret so that when she has an uncharacteristic outburst, it comes as a surprise but also a burst of catharsis, that she is allowing herself to be heard.
This is such an effortless read, swiftly arriving at the end after shortly starting at the beginning. And Brookner creates atmosphere in a way that is indicicative of her, Immaculately full of detail. The grey slate misty skies often appear as a backdrop.
This does glide but it didn't have the impact on me that Look At Me and A Start In Life had but her work is incredibly addictive and so absolutely worth reading. My dog and cat had a complaint that Furry friends are underrepresented in her novels and I had to agree. There is such a familiarity in her works that, unlike Emma, we do feel very much at home and it's a place we long to return to.
December 24, 2025
An elegantly written character based novel about 26 year old Emma Roberts who is living with her widowed mother in a London flat. Emma realizes that she should live independently as she feels uncomfortable with the frequent visits from her mother’s disapproving and domineering brother. Emma is a reserved young woman who is not happy going to parties and having lovers. When she is offered a scholarship to study seventeenth century garden design in Paris Emma takes her chance and takes a small Paris hotel room. At the library sho goes to work in, she meets Francois Desnoyers, a confident young modern Parisian woman. Emma and Francois become friends. In Paris Emma meets Michael with whom she becomes friends with.
The novel explores the mother daughter relationship, social isolation, disillusionment with romantic love and conflicting thoughts about living in Paris and London.
Here are some quotes from the book:
“For once a thing is known, it can never be unknown. It can only be forgotten.”
“I suppose what one wants really is ideal company and books are ideal company.”
“Problems of human behaviour still continue to baffle us, but at least in the Library we have them properly filed.”
Another satisfying read that Anita Brookner fans should enjoy. I have now read 17 of Anita Brookner’s novels. “Fraud” and “Latecomers’ are my favorites so far!
This book was first published in 2005.
The novel explores the mother daughter relationship, social isolation, disillusionment with romantic love and conflicting thoughts about living in Paris and London.
Here are some quotes from the book:
“For once a thing is known, it can never be unknown. It can only be forgotten.”
“I suppose what one wants really is ideal company and books are ideal company.”
“Problems of human behaviour still continue to baffle us, but at least in the Library we have them properly filed.”
Another satisfying read that Anita Brookner fans should enjoy. I have now read 17 of Anita Brookner’s novels. “Fraud” and “Latecomers’ are my favorites so far!
This book was first published in 2005.
May 21, 2024
Disappointing, it felt like i read the distant echo of a second character's monotonus (and quite sad) life. She settles for less than she wants, and is okey with that. Fuck no. I want everything life can give and will gladly put up a little fight for it. Characters are unkind, full of rigid manners, and love is secondary : the only attachement present is the one where you don't take any risk and don't have any feeling other than economic and friendlyish comfort. Again, fuck no.
July 8, 2016
While reading Brookner's Bildungsroman I began to appreciate more the work of photographer Jennifer Dickson. "Light is the essential animating factor." Brookner "makes the landscape and the weather mirror the central character's feelings." Brookner has been compared to Jane Austin - consciously omitting certain details while telling their stories.
Anita Brookner as writer of consciousness:
Anita Brookner Writing about Writing
"Every human being has hundreds of separate people living under his skin. The talent of a writer is his ability to give them their separate names, identities, personalities and have them relate to other characters living with him."
Anita Brookner "is known for her elegant turn of phrase and elegiac description of mood, often a deep well of inner loneliness (Kerbel 2009-03-01).
I appreciated the way that London-born Brookner's own education - art historian at the Cortauld Institute of Art - added rich texture to the places she described. Having spent many hours alone in museums and art galleries, I related to the near-solitude of museums and Classical French gardens in the off-season. I created a map of some of these places named in her book. I also created a timeline of Brookner's life.
Emma Roberts, is 30-something when we meet her as she is just completing her book on 17th century gardens. She worked on this book for many years and surprised the publisher when she handed it to him. see para p. 5 on completing the book . . . She went to Paris to study ideal, classical garden designs from the 17th and 18th centuries. She was given a scholarship. Gardens that intrigued her included those for wealthy patrons like Fouquet.
Emma began to visit "real gardens" like the Vaux-le-Vicomte and Marly-le-Roi [real vs ideal] where she came into "delightful contact with her subject" p. 12. In those dignified but deserted spaces I could appreciate the symmetry which I had once thought rigid. I now saw that it guarded a secret, and if it enshrined a certain melancholy it also celebrated a divine proportion. I became attached to their absent owners, sought out missing features p.12." "see more p.13
"In the Musee des Arts Decoratifs I found designs for fountains, miniature obelisks, portraits of long-dead pub dogs, delirious landscape drawings of massive overhanging boughs and branches, as if the artist were trying to escape the constraints of preordained symmetry . . . I could sympathize with all nature, and by contrast, with the echoing spaces of the museum, not much visited, where only the occasional footstep, or creak of wooden floor, broke the silence. I realized that I was becoming acclimatized, that the disappointment and loneliness that I still felt could be dispelled by such encounters, and that although I was habitually unaccompanied I could summon up an agreeable remark, a fragment of conversation, so that at no time, or so I flatter myself, did I reveal the existence of the sobriety that had overtaken me in that most vibrant of cities and which had remained my constant companion." p. 13
Anita Brookner as writer of consciousness:
"My departures are all the same now accomplished without difficulty but with a certain philosophical fatigue. Once I would have gone anywhere, strenuously: now I tend to go to the same places, which I know well, too well perhaps. I also see a few friends who have survived our how separate lives. Once we were familiars: now we are merely figures in the same landscape, and what had once been eagerness has become obligation. There is no blame attaching to this; the trajectory had been designed by the unconscious, a long time ago. But the unconscious does not rule the world, does not even illuminate it, apart from these brief fragments of understanding. It is, after all, only part of the self. The other part, the most important, is subject to the will. But it is also subject to the will of others (Brookner 2005:5)."
Anita Brookner Writing about Writing
"Every human being has hundreds of separate people living under his skin. The talent of a writer is his ability to give them their separate names, identities, personalities and have them relate to other characters living with him."
Anita Brookner "is known for her elegant turn of phrase and elegiac description of mood, often a deep well of inner loneliness (Kerbel 2009-03-01).
I appreciated the way that London-born Brookner's own education - art historian at the Cortauld Institute of Art - added rich texture to the places she described. Having spent many hours alone in museums and art galleries, I related to the near-solitude of museums and Classical French gardens in the off-season. I created a map of some of these places named in her book. I also created a timeline of Brookner's life.
Emma Roberts, is 30-something when we meet her as she is just completing her book on 17th century gardens. She worked on this book for many years and surprised the publisher when she handed it to him. see para p. 5 on completing the book . . . She went to Paris to study ideal, classical garden designs from the 17th and 18th centuries. She was given a scholarship. Gardens that intrigued her included those for wealthy patrons like Fouquet.
Emma began to visit "real gardens" like the Vaux-le-Vicomte and Marly-le-Roi [real vs ideal] where she came into "delightful contact with her subject" p. 12. In those dignified but deserted spaces I could appreciate the symmetry which I had once thought rigid. I now saw that it guarded a secret, and if it enshrined a certain melancholy it also celebrated a divine proportion. I became attached to their absent owners, sought out missing features p.12." "see more p.13
"In the Musee des Arts Decoratifs I found designs for fountains, miniature obelisks, portraits of long-dead pub dogs, delirious landscape drawings of massive overhanging boughs and branches, as if the artist were trying to escape the constraints of preordained symmetry . . . I could sympathize with all nature, and by contrast, with the echoing spaces of the museum, not much visited, where only the occasional footstep, or creak of wooden floor, broke the silence. I realized that I was becoming acclimatized, that the disappointment and loneliness that I still felt could be dispelled by such encounters, and that although I was habitually unaccompanied I could summon up an agreeable remark, a fragment of conversation, so that at no time, or so I flatter myself, did I reveal the existence of the sobriety that had overtaken me in that most vibrant of cities and which had remained my constant companion." p. 13
August 24, 2011
I started reading Anita Brookner’s Leaving Home knowing next to nothing about the author and her book. As some of you might guess, I find the title – Leaving Home – very alluring.
I heard of Brookner at the same time as I learned about Anne Tyler, and somehow I came to imagine them as similar writers. My premature conclusion tells me they are not! Premature, obviously, I’ve only read one book by each of them, most of their writings are yet to be discovered.
My first meeting with Tyler was not all that successful. Brookner on the other hand impressed me a lot! And I must say it makes me laugh to read all the negative reviews she received for this book:
“With Emma Roberts, the heroine of Leaving Home, Brookner may finally have gone too far. In many ways, Emma is a typical Brookner character: bookish, meek, all but devoid of sexual passion. But she also displays a wide streak of self-pity that makes it difficult for a reader to like her nearly as much as Brookner does.” … “Yet Emma’s whining tone undermines our sympathy.” – Caryn James (the NYT)
I actually find the novel amazingly good.
Leaving Home is about Emma (26) who decides to leave her quiet life with her mother in London and move to Paris to study landscape gardening. Emma is looking for a life less ordinary, for a life different from the one her mother has lead. But Emma is old enough to recognize herself, and what she sees is a solitary and melancholic person. And a central question crystalizes: Is it at all possible to leave home? By leaving her mothers house Emma becomes more independent, but never extrovert. And gradually she seems to be mirroring the claustrophobic life of her mother.
To put it short: I like the story and I like the way it is told.
To be a bit more specific:
Emma is not a very likable person, and I sometimes wonder if she really is to believe – is she telling the truth about herself and the life she is living? A special atmosphere is created when the reader feels reservations towards the protagonist in a story – it is a very emotional disturbing situation, a situation that only very good authors can master. Brookner does. Emma does not have my sympathy: I do not understand her choices, I do not know what her next move will be, and in many ways she really annoys me. She is indecisive and weak despite her intelligence and means. This is how Brookner keeps my interest up; she has created a character I have difficulties in understanding, therefore I am eager to find out what this really is all about. But Brookner is stronger than me; there are no solutions or revelations in the end. Brookner has gone all the way down with her character – she is not interested in consoling her reader. This is how life is: deeply enigmatic. Why doesn’t Emma become an easygoing, social and funny girl like the rest of us???
This is why I like Leaving Home a lot better than Tyler’s Ladder of Years: Tyler doesn’t, in this book, dare to run to the end of the line. In the end she has to make her main character into a nice and polite women who will continue to take care of her family, even if she may have wanted something else. Tyler puts everything back to normal before she leaves us, Brookner, on the other hand, leave us in a black hole – . The home, which Emma unsuccessfully tries to leave, is a womb. Its uncanny and uninhabitable, but there is no way out.
I much prefer Brookner’s ending to Tyler’s. It demands more of the reader – and of the writer.
I heard of Brookner at the same time as I learned about Anne Tyler, and somehow I came to imagine them as similar writers. My premature conclusion tells me they are not! Premature, obviously, I’ve only read one book by each of them, most of their writings are yet to be discovered.
My first meeting with Tyler was not all that successful. Brookner on the other hand impressed me a lot! And I must say it makes me laugh to read all the negative reviews she received for this book:
“With Emma Roberts, the heroine of Leaving Home, Brookner may finally have gone too far. In many ways, Emma is a typical Brookner character: bookish, meek, all but devoid of sexual passion. But she also displays a wide streak of self-pity that makes it difficult for a reader to like her nearly as much as Brookner does.” … “Yet Emma’s whining tone undermines our sympathy.” – Caryn James (the NYT)
I actually find the novel amazingly good.
Leaving Home is about Emma (26) who decides to leave her quiet life with her mother in London and move to Paris to study landscape gardening. Emma is looking for a life less ordinary, for a life different from the one her mother has lead. But Emma is old enough to recognize herself, and what she sees is a solitary and melancholic person. And a central question crystalizes: Is it at all possible to leave home? By leaving her mothers house Emma becomes more independent, but never extrovert. And gradually she seems to be mirroring the claustrophobic life of her mother.
To put it short: I like the story and I like the way it is told.
To be a bit more specific:
Emma is not a very likable person, and I sometimes wonder if she really is to believe – is she telling the truth about herself and the life she is living? A special atmosphere is created when the reader feels reservations towards the protagonist in a story – it is a very emotional disturbing situation, a situation that only very good authors can master. Brookner does. Emma does not have my sympathy: I do not understand her choices, I do not know what her next move will be, and in many ways she really annoys me. She is indecisive and weak despite her intelligence and means. This is how Brookner keeps my interest up; she has created a character I have difficulties in understanding, therefore I am eager to find out what this really is all about. But Brookner is stronger than me; there are no solutions or revelations in the end. Brookner has gone all the way down with her character – she is not interested in consoling her reader. This is how life is: deeply enigmatic. Why doesn’t Emma become an easygoing, social and funny girl like the rest of us???
This is why I like Leaving Home a lot better than Tyler’s Ladder of Years: Tyler doesn’t, in this book, dare to run to the end of the line. In the end she has to make her main character into a nice and polite women who will continue to take care of her family, even if she may have wanted something else. Tyler puts everything back to normal before she leaves us, Brookner, on the other hand, leave us in a black hole – . The home, which Emma unsuccessfully tries to leave, is a womb. Its uncanny and uninhabitable, but there is no way out.
I much prefer Brookner’s ending to Tyler’s. It demands more of the reader – and of the writer.
February 24, 2025
REREAD 2/25: I am bumping this up to five stars after listening to the audiobook, narrated by Joanna David. David is a pitch-perfect Anita Brookner narrator. She delivers all the mournfulness and almost hysterical passivity of the typical Brookner heroine, but you feel the anger vibrating underneath. In my mind's eye, I could see the serifs in those elegant Brookner sentences turning to thorns. I highly recommend this audiobook if you're on the fence about trying Brookner.
- - - - - -- -
My fourth Brookner novel was the chilliest yet, something like descending, step by step, into a deep freeze. In a Texas heatwave, this is not the worst thing, but I'm starting to get the sense that I have more of an affinity for the books she wrote in her 50s, like Hotel du Lac and A Friend from England, whose currents of intensity, however misleading, give me something to look forward to. My sample size is small, though. I look forward to enlarging it.
Leaving Home is about a young (for Brookner) woman's brief time studying in Paris, and her eventual renunciation of the independent life she leads there for a merely lonely one back in London. Passive, inert, and obedient, Emma is defined by her perpetual flight from "an existential absence" that follows her from place to place. Her residences, temporary and permanent, all feel like traps. She is never at home in any of them until she's already left; she longs to be cared for rather than merely tolerated, but has accepted in advance that this will never happen, and instinctively distrusts anyone who seems even remotely poised to offer it. Throughout the book you are rooting for her to make her final home in Paris, where a single woman can at least enjoy the beauty and flair of French life, but you know from the start she's not going to make it back. (Young Anita Brookner didn't.) In the end, even the French disappoint; her unconventional friend Francoise (ha!) chooses rigid social roles over authentic emotion. The implication is that a beautiful house in the French countryside is probably worth a loveless marriage.
Emma is, of course, shut out of both. Unlike other Brookner heroines, she does not even experience an intense, unsatisfactory love affair before resigning herself to eternal spinsterhood. Her sole moment of sensuality occurs when she sees, by accident, a young man asleep in bed. "At the sight of his surrendered nakedness I saw what had been missing from my life," she says. But even this is immediately explained away: "It was only sleep, I reminded myself, but I did not see how anyone could have enough of it." It's as if death immediately rushes in to steal the covers. It's enough to make you shiver in 102 degrees.
- - - - - -- -
My fourth Brookner novel was the chilliest yet, something like descending, step by step, into a deep freeze. In a Texas heatwave, this is not the worst thing, but I'm starting to get the sense that I have more of an affinity for the books she wrote in her 50s, like Hotel du Lac and A Friend from England, whose currents of intensity, however misleading, give me something to look forward to. My sample size is small, though. I look forward to enlarging it.
Leaving Home is about a young (for Brookner) woman's brief time studying in Paris, and her eventual renunciation of the independent life she leads there for a merely lonely one back in London. Passive, inert, and obedient, Emma is defined by her perpetual flight from "an existential absence" that follows her from place to place. Her residences, temporary and permanent, all feel like traps. She is never at home in any of them until she's already left; she longs to be cared for rather than merely tolerated, but has accepted in advance that this will never happen, and instinctively distrusts anyone who seems even remotely poised to offer it. Throughout the book you are rooting for her to make her final home in Paris, where a single woman can at least enjoy the beauty and flair of French life, but you know from the start she's not going to make it back. (Young Anita Brookner didn't.) In the end, even the French disappoint; her unconventional friend Francoise (ha!) chooses rigid social roles over authentic emotion. The implication is that a beautiful house in the French countryside is probably worth a loveless marriage.
Emma is, of course, shut out of both. Unlike other Brookner heroines, she does not even experience an intense, unsatisfactory love affair before resigning herself to eternal spinsterhood. Her sole moment of sensuality occurs when she sees, by accident, a young man asleep in bed. "At the sight of his surrendered nakedness I saw what had been missing from my life," she says. But even this is immediately explained away: "It was only sleep, I reminded myself, but I did not see how anyone could have enough of it." It's as if death immediately rushes in to steal the covers. It's enough to make you shiver in 102 degrees.
December 1, 2011
After reading a couple of online interviews and other pieces about Anita Brookner, a distinctive personality profile starts to emerge. Professionally trained as an art historian, she taught at the Courtauld Institute and developed a reputation as a rather distinguished academic. She didn’t publish her first novel, “A Start in Life,” until she was in her fifties. She almost never gives interviews, is known among friends as being extraordinarily intelligent, and according to herself, wants nothing more than to be left alone. She has never married, stating “I chose the wrong people, and the wrong people chose me. So it never came about. At the time that was a cause of great sadness, certainly.”
Much like in the novels of J. M. Coetzee, we must only engage in a willful suspension of disbelief when we are asked to assume Brookner’s storyline is more novel than memoir. Emma, the novel’s protagonist, is strikingly like Brookner herself: cold, distant, aloof, and perhaps eager for excitement, but would think it gauche to ever outwardly show that eagerness. Feeling trapped by her suffocating relationship with her mother (who, by the way, also highly resembles Brookner), Emma moves to Paris to study the designs of French palatial gardens, unconsciously thinking this might bring some sort of linearity to her otherwise disordered personal life.
Once she arrives in Paris, she slowly befriends Francoise Desnoyers, who works in the library where Emma regularly studies. She quickly pegs Francoise as a sort of libertine, only to realize that she too has an awkward, cumbersome relationship with her mother. Instead of the rational progress she envisioned that could be easily transferred from her study of gardens to her personal life, she is stupefied by the similarity of her circumstances. Once Emma is introduced to Francoise’s mother, she is quickly drawn into her family’s circle, with their outré manners and bizarre rituals.
Brookner, much like she has teased herself with the idea of happiness and fulfillment in real life, has done the same thing with Emma here. She meets men, and while she may be open-minded regarding her possible success in a romantic relationship, the reader gets the distinct impression that her overbearing cynicism and willful jadedness will crush any living thing within a mile. The message of the novel, if there is one, may very well be “growing is impossible, and don’t be so naïve as to think there is anything called happiness.”
Brookner’s style, on the other hand, left a wholly different impression on me. She can certainly write. She does it beautifully. Many of the sentences reminded me of early Henry James, with the kind of formal premeditation for which I have always had a fondness. Other reviews have suggested that “Hotel Du Lac” is a better novel, and it might be. But “Leaving Home” left me tired with its message of intellectual and emotional stagnation and utter pessimism.
Much like in the novels of J. M. Coetzee, we must only engage in a willful suspension of disbelief when we are asked to assume Brookner’s storyline is more novel than memoir. Emma, the novel’s protagonist, is strikingly like Brookner herself: cold, distant, aloof, and perhaps eager for excitement, but would think it gauche to ever outwardly show that eagerness. Feeling trapped by her suffocating relationship with her mother (who, by the way, also highly resembles Brookner), Emma moves to Paris to study the designs of French palatial gardens, unconsciously thinking this might bring some sort of linearity to her otherwise disordered personal life.
Once she arrives in Paris, she slowly befriends Francoise Desnoyers, who works in the library where Emma regularly studies. She quickly pegs Francoise as a sort of libertine, only to realize that she too has an awkward, cumbersome relationship with her mother. Instead of the rational progress she envisioned that could be easily transferred from her study of gardens to her personal life, she is stupefied by the similarity of her circumstances. Once Emma is introduced to Francoise’s mother, she is quickly drawn into her family’s circle, with their outré manners and bizarre rituals.
Brookner, much like she has teased herself with the idea of happiness and fulfillment in real life, has done the same thing with Emma here. She meets men, and while she may be open-minded regarding her possible success in a romantic relationship, the reader gets the distinct impression that her overbearing cynicism and willful jadedness will crush any living thing within a mile. The message of the novel, if there is one, may very well be “growing is impossible, and don’t be so naïve as to think there is anything called happiness.”
Brookner’s style, on the other hand, left a wholly different impression on me. She can certainly write. She does it beautifully. Many of the sentences reminded me of early Henry James, with the kind of formal premeditation for which I have always had a fondness. Other reviews have suggested that “Hotel Du Lac” is a better novel, and it might be. But “Leaving Home” left me tired with its message of intellectual and emotional stagnation and utter pessimism.
May 23, 2017
A Tale of Two Cities
The title and back cover of Anita Brookner's novel suggest that this is about the perennial adolescent drama of breaking away from parental influences and leaving the nest. But this is only a small part of it. Emma Roberts, though younger than most of Brookner's protagonists, is already in her mid-twenties, and her quest is more a search for home than the leaving of it. She begins by moving to Paris as a graduate student of landscape architecture, staying first of all in a horrible student hostel, then taking a room in a small hotel. Later, she buys her own flat in London, and alternates between the two cities, discovering more about herself, even if only by coming to accept what she is not. The one home that she really envies is a country house belonging to the mother of her vivacious friend Françoise—although the world of the French haute bourgeoisie makes her feel unworthy by comparison.
I suspect that this novel is more autobiographical than most; it also has personal resonances for me, since I was working on my own art history thesis in Paris at a similar age. Although I am a man, while Brookner writes so tellingly about women, I treasure her insight into the female mind. It is true that she confines herself to women of a certain class and mental disposition but, for me, that only increases the sense of authenticity.
Not for nothing is Brookner's scholarly field (I once took a seminar with her) the late 18th-century watershed between French classicism and romanticism. Her characters always brush shoulders with romance, but opt instead for the comfort and predictability of classic balance, a quality which is also reflected in the cool elegance of the author's prose. This novel is, in effect, an anti-romance, a book in which few things actually happen—or sometimes happen only to be reversed a few chapters later. There is a situation late in the book in which Emma, who has left her own maternal home, suddenly finds herself in charge of Françoise's home and ailing mother, while the daughter appears to have broken away entirely. But a few pages further, the situation has been stood on its head once more.
Such delightful realignments within a basically static universe give me the same fascination as a Calder mobile: a limited range of elements moving in relation to each other, seen now in this configuration, now in that, but always maintaining an essential balance. This applies as much to the delicate rhythm of Brookner's prose as to the subtle push and pull of her emotional plotting. For those who, like me, take pleasure in her quiet aesthetic, her novels create a unique atmosphere: a closed world, perhaps, but one that is totally absorbing and not the least depressing. The title of this book notwithstanding, there is a special satisfaction in completing the emotional circle: coming home again.
The title and back cover of Anita Brookner's novel suggest that this is about the perennial adolescent drama of breaking away from parental influences and leaving the nest. But this is only a small part of it. Emma Roberts, though younger than most of Brookner's protagonists, is already in her mid-twenties, and her quest is more a search for home than the leaving of it. She begins by moving to Paris as a graduate student of landscape architecture, staying first of all in a horrible student hostel, then taking a room in a small hotel. Later, she buys her own flat in London, and alternates between the two cities, discovering more about herself, even if only by coming to accept what she is not. The one home that she really envies is a country house belonging to the mother of her vivacious friend Françoise—although the world of the French haute bourgeoisie makes her feel unworthy by comparison.
I suspect that this novel is more autobiographical than most; it also has personal resonances for me, since I was working on my own art history thesis in Paris at a similar age. Although I am a man, while Brookner writes so tellingly about women, I treasure her insight into the female mind. It is true that she confines herself to women of a certain class and mental disposition but, for me, that only increases the sense of authenticity.
Not for nothing is Brookner's scholarly field (I once took a seminar with her) the late 18th-century watershed between French classicism and romanticism. Her characters always brush shoulders with romance, but opt instead for the comfort and predictability of classic balance, a quality which is also reflected in the cool elegance of the author's prose. This novel is, in effect, an anti-romance, a book in which few things actually happen—or sometimes happen only to be reversed a few chapters later. There is a situation late in the book in which Emma, who has left her own maternal home, suddenly finds herself in charge of Françoise's home and ailing mother, while the daughter appears to have broken away entirely. But a few pages further, the situation has been stood on its head once more.
Such delightful realignments within a basically static universe give me the same fascination as a Calder mobile: a limited range of elements moving in relation to each other, seen now in this configuration, now in that, but always maintaining an essential balance. This applies as much to the delicate rhythm of Brookner's prose as to the subtle push and pull of her emotional plotting. For those who, like me, take pleasure in her quiet aesthetic, her novels create a unique atmosphere: a closed world, perhaps, but one that is totally absorbing and not the least depressing. The title of this book notwithstanding, there is a special satisfaction in completing the emotional circle: coming home again.
February 6, 2016
" Te la immagini la casa ideale, un posto dove desideri stare? A volte peso che potrei essere più felice da qualche altra parte. Non felice, attenzione: più felice. Se mi capita di vedere una casa piuttosto normale penso, sì, una cosa del genere. Forse soltanto per un dettaglio, una tenda gonfiata dal ventoa una finestra del piano di sopra...."
" Sapevo, quasi con fede superstiziosa, che non bisogna mai tornare indietro, mai ripercorrere i propri passi nella speranza che tutto torni come prima, perchè non accade mai."
Se vi piacciono i romanzi introspettivi e completamente al femminile, da leggere con molta attenzione,questo è quello che fa per voi.
Anita Brookner scava in profondità nella mente e nel cuore di Emma Roberts, ragazza inglese di fine anni Settanta, non ancora trentenne e neolaureata, la cui vita non ha ancora spiccato il volo, e forse mai lo farà.
Emma abita ancora con la madre, una donna sola e taciturna, concentrata soltanto sulla lettura, senza una vita sociale e senza nessuna voglia di averla, e lei stessa pare seguire le sue orme.
Emma vuole allontanarsi da casa e soprattutto è ossessionata dal desiderio di averne una soltanto sua, senza le incursioni dell'odiato zio Rob.
Allo stesso tempo non riesce a trovare la sua strada, è inquieta, si sente sempre fuori luogo e anche quando sembra aver preso la decisione di vivere a Parigi, dove si è recata per approfondire lo studio della progettazione di giardini, ogni sua convinzione viene continuamente smentita dai suoi stessi dubbi, dalle sue paure, dalla sua mancanza di voglia di fare.
La cosa più semplice sembra vivere alla giornata e farsi trasportare dai pochi eventi che segnano la sua vita.
Anche i nuovi rapporti di amicizia o poco più che Emma prova ad instaurare sono perlopiù inconcludenti e sempre piuttosto tiepidi; l'amica bibiotecaria Francoise, gli uomini che lei definisce compagni ma sono in realtà poco più che amici, il misterioso Michael e il disilluso Philips.
Un romanzo impregnato di solitudine, dubbi, illusioni, tristezza, una scrittura elegante che ci riporta indietro nel tempo, ai classici e alle loro tormentate protagoniste.
http://tiserveunlibro.blogspot.it
" Sapevo, quasi con fede superstiziosa, che non bisogna mai tornare indietro, mai ripercorrere i propri passi nella speranza che tutto torni come prima, perchè non accade mai."
Se vi piacciono i romanzi introspettivi e completamente al femminile, da leggere con molta attenzione,questo è quello che fa per voi.
Anita Brookner scava in profondità nella mente e nel cuore di Emma Roberts, ragazza inglese di fine anni Settanta, non ancora trentenne e neolaureata, la cui vita non ha ancora spiccato il volo, e forse mai lo farà.
Emma abita ancora con la madre, una donna sola e taciturna, concentrata soltanto sulla lettura, senza una vita sociale e senza nessuna voglia di averla, e lei stessa pare seguire le sue orme.
Emma vuole allontanarsi da casa e soprattutto è ossessionata dal desiderio di averne una soltanto sua, senza le incursioni dell'odiato zio Rob.
Allo stesso tempo non riesce a trovare la sua strada, è inquieta, si sente sempre fuori luogo e anche quando sembra aver preso la decisione di vivere a Parigi, dove si è recata per approfondire lo studio della progettazione di giardini, ogni sua convinzione viene continuamente smentita dai suoi stessi dubbi, dalle sue paure, dalla sua mancanza di voglia di fare.
La cosa più semplice sembra vivere alla giornata e farsi trasportare dai pochi eventi che segnano la sua vita.
Anche i nuovi rapporti di amicizia o poco più che Emma prova ad instaurare sono perlopiù inconcludenti e sempre piuttosto tiepidi; l'amica bibiotecaria Francoise, gli uomini che lei definisce compagni ma sono in realtà poco più che amici, il misterioso Michael e il disilluso Philips.
Un romanzo impregnato di solitudine, dubbi, illusioni, tristezza, una scrittura elegante che ci riporta indietro nel tempo, ai classici e alle loro tormentate protagoniste.
http://tiserveunlibro.blogspot.it
January 6, 2014
Anita intactly renders the loniless inside Emma Roberts' heart and inside the place where she dwells onto every page of this short little book. "leaving home" is a manifesto for freedom of herself. Emma leaves home for her actual duty and also for severing some connections that seem to be her bridling burden. This connection is between her mom and herself, is beween her upbringing and her gradual condensed self liberation. Simply leaving home sounds really simple, but not for someone who leaves home to seek the new self. She doesn't know who she could be. She feels her old home is everywhere within the sight of the new places. Her heart has been so bundled with her home, it is simply impossible to sever the connection. Is that connection really necessarily to be bad for a new self? Does she really needs the change? or it is just simply a kind of tiredness that runs out her patience. A new life is hard, cause the old self is simply so used to the oldness. She is keeping calling for some outside force to impinge upon her some sort of change, but that force is too feeble to exert its power.
February 8, 2017
I purchased Anita Brookner's Leaving Home with my thesis in mind, without quite knowing if it was literary enough to include. Prior to this, I had only read Hotel du Lac, which I chose for a book club I was part of several years ago. Whilst I enjoyed it, I also found it a touch underwhelming. From the very beginning of Leaving Home, however, I was captivated. The narrative voice is strong, and it says a lot about interiority whilst following a single female character, Emma, who is trying to make her place in the world. Emma is rather unusual at times in her outlook; she does not permit herself to fall in love, but cultivates platonic relationships with two men.
In some ways, Leaving Home does feel rather dated; it has antiquated dialogue patterns, in which nobody seems to use any colloquialisms whatsoever. Despite this, Emma is rather realistic. She has rather a lot of freedom, and spends her time flitting back and forth from London to Paris. In the sensitively wrought Leaving Home, Brookner demonstrates what it is like to be a lonely young woman.
In some ways, Leaving Home does feel rather dated; it has antiquated dialogue patterns, in which nobody seems to use any colloquialisms whatsoever. Despite this, Emma is rather realistic. She has rather a lot of freedom, and spends her time flitting back and forth from London to Paris. In the sensitively wrought Leaving Home, Brookner demonstrates what it is like to be a lonely young woman.
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