Jan-Maat’s Reviews > Falling Slowly > Status Update

'You've been reading too much. That was always your trouble.'
' my trouble is that neither of these characters came out of a book. There were no happy endings.'

She joined this group, you are. They met every week to denounce male power. '
'How very old-fashioned of them.'

- a rare market that Brookner was part of the culture of the 90s and au fait with the spice girls and the concept of the ladette 😛

She saw that there two people who had never met, held the keys to her own life, were her completion, her fulfilment...

As a reader I don't think that I agree

In bed she may awake for a long time, sending the loneliness of the flat. But when she slept it was without dreams, so that she woke easily & calmly, to another day.

- dreams =problems for Miriam, !

She could no longer detect Beatrice's presence. What she felt was an immense stillness, as if she were living in the aftermath of some natural disaster, an earhquake, a volcano. There was no fear in this, only a sort of recognition. This was how it would be now, a life without company, without surprises. Even this silence was appropriate. Beatrice"a last gift to her.

Beatrice & Miriam had been grateful for Mrs Oliver's assiduity. She has had the true instinct of friendship, or maybe it was love, she did not recognise stiffness or discouragement, merely attributing them to shyness, which was accurate in a number of cases.

Hastily, she made provision for him. He could stroll, perform small tasks; he could wear his Panama hat . He would be bored of course, but then so would she.

She bought a couple of books, which would take their place on the pile by her bedside, & perhaps at some time in the future, when this enormous upheaval had been out aside, she would have the patience to read.

She had been ardent herself, until she was rather forcibly reminded that she was no longer young, had sought to ally herself with the heroines of novels rather than with the practical business of finding a partner, still preferred stories in which a long ordeal is crowned with a happy outcome. Of her failed expectations only her sister knew, & characteristically blamed her choice of reading.

It occurred to him that what the world expected from him was a fully fledged biography, with details of the illustrious persons he had known, whereas he desired to recall sweet small incidents, family dignity, unassuming love. No publisher would be interested in such a thing; refugees' stories were all too common.