THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 3, 1996 TAG: 9603040171
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J3 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY BERNICE GROHSKOPF
LENGTH: Medium: 75 lines
INCIDENTS IN THE RUE LAUGIER
ANITA BROOKNER
Random House. 232 pp. $23.
Ever since publication of her award-winning Hotel du Lac in 1984 Anita Brookner's writing has focused on the relationship between two women, a shallow, self-centered, imperious one and the more thoughtful, self-effacing, subservient victim she dominates. While the plots have varied in such books as The Misalliance, A Closed Eye and Dolly, the theme has remained the same.
Incidents in the Rue Laugier, Brookner's 15th novel, approaches this theme from another angle. It is the life story of Maud and Edward as imagined by their daughter, Maffy, who introduces the tale by expressing curiosity about the single cryptic entry in her late mother's journal. After that first chapter, Maffy disappears, except for a shadowy appearance, until the final chapter.
Edward is an insecure young man who unexpectedly inherits a shabby secondhand bookshop he doesn't want. His admired friend Tyler is a handsome, self-centered, seductive youth with whom all are in love. Maud, an innocent, sheltered young woman whose widowed mother longs for her to marry ``well,'' completes the triangle.
The three young people are brought together in summer of the 1950s at the French country home of Maud's rich aunt where, her mother hopes, she'll establish a relationship with her cousin. But the seductive Tyler is irresistible to the innocent, submissive Maud. As Edward observes Tyler's effect on Maud, he responds to her charged erotic energy, and his imagination torments him.
Brookner's best writing is in this section, as she narrates Maud's effect on the two young men. While Edward is jealous and disapproving, he can't help admiring Tyler's skill as seducer, nor can he bring himself to leave, although he knows he should. When Tyler tires of the game he departs, leaving Maud to Edward, who proves his strength by trying to rectify the wrong committed by Tyler.
Maud and Edward are two people whose vulnerability and sense of failure unite them, and Brookner might have told their unhappy story without the awkward device of the daughter's imagination.
Some of the improbable events in the story assume fairy-tale proportions. Not only does Edward inherit a bookshop, which he is unqualified to manage, but a competent, trustworthy shop assistant suddenly appears. An experienced, willing adviser to guide Edward's business to success makes an even more sudden appearance.
The speeded-up ending as the shadowy daughter is about to go off to Cambridge to read modern languages also comes as a surprise. Brookner's repeated reference to Maud's reading and re-reading of Marcel Proust and to Edward's interest in art and his reflections on Wordsworth's clouds of glory seems contrived. These two people have little to say to each other and give no evidence of having the faintest interest in art or literature.
Anita Brookner's strengths are her elegant prose and her thoughtful, perceptive observations. But she avoids dramatization, maintaining a distance from her characters so the reader never knows them. In her reflective passages Brookner appears to be striving for a Proustian or Jamesian style, which results in a languid atmosphere that pervades this novel as it does her others.
It remains a puzzle that Brookner, an authority on 18th-century painting and the first female Slade Professor at Cambridge, can write about people who do nothing but lie around dreaming, reading, drinking tea and taking long walks ruminating on their trapped lives and what had once been their aspirations. MEMO: Bernice Grohskopf is a free-lance book reviewer in Charlottesville who
specializes in 19th century British literature. by CNB