Incidents in the Rue Laugier

Andy Miller of Backlisted podcast fame has had an ongoing love affair with the writing of Anita Brookner to the point he made a joke about there being a “cult” readership due to his enthusiasm. That enthusiasm would never have made me think I would walk into a charity shop and find not one but four novels by Brookner all for the princely sum of $2 each. I grabbed them all, I mean, what more can I complain about? If I didn't like the writer that much, it was a donation to a charity at the very least.

So with absolutely no intention to particularly start this cult writer, I did exactly that. The truth is that I would once have run a thousand kilometres from a novel such as this as it had minimal dialogue, long passages that were deep descriptions of individuals and of place and was then lacking a particularly strong plot.

For whatever reason I could not put Incidents in the Rue Laugier down, the writing is extraordinarily good and that has to be part of it, the depth of the characters was of such quality in the descriptors used I found myself just compelled to keep reading. As to the theme, it covers that reality that the vast majority live, a life unfulfilled.

The story is written by Maffy, the daughter of the two main protagonists, Edward and Maud. Maffy in the first chapter admits that this is an unreliable narration of her parent's life and is based on a few words written in a notebook that she found after her mother passed, and also confesses to having no idea as to their lives and that the tale told is fabrication. With that Maffy tells of the meeting of Edward and Maud and how they “fell in love” and got married, had a child and then lived and died in an all very simple and so middle class bourgeois way. And that is it!

But.......it is so well told and written I could not put this down. This was neither unhappy nor happy families, it was the story of lives that might have been, and the sense of loneliness that pervaded both characters as their very existence just chugged along and along. I am amazed how much I enjoyed this and I too join the cult.

Highly recommended for the sublime writing alone.