“A funny, flawed, but still beautifully written study of melancholy” is how a Guardian critic assessed Hotel du Lac, and melancholy certainly suffuses the setting and characters.
The melancholy of the quiet, snobbish, old-fashioned eponymous Swiss hotel is well captured in the following passage: “As far as guests were concerned, it took a perverse pride in its very absence of attractions, so that any visitor mildly looking for a room would be puzzled and deflected by the sparseness of the terrace, the muted hush of the lobby … There was no sauna, no hairdresser and certainly no glass cases displaying items of jewellery; the bar was small and dark and its austerity did not encourage people to linger.”
Melancholy also bathes many characters. The protagonist, Edith, a writer of romance novels, has been banished to the hotel for a period of reflection by her friends because of a secret (and frequently lonely) affair with a married man and an aborted marriage; the rich Mrs Pusey and her daughter Jennifer lead privileged but ultimately shallow lives; the solitary Mme de Bonneuil has been expelled from her chateau by her son and his new wife; and Monica has been sent to the hotel by her husband to solve her “eating disorder” and get in shape to produce his heir.
Brookner came to fiction late, having been an accomplished art historian, and her eye for visual detail informs her descriptive powers
Brookner has been described as a “mistress of gloom” but a feeling of sadness isn’t what one ultimately takes away from the novel. The letters Edith writes to her former lover (which she never sends) with observations on her fellow guests are dryly humorous and laced with acerbic wit. For example, she describes a friend thus: “She was a handsome woman of 45 and would remain so for many years.” During her stay at the hotel she reflects on her own life with real insight and honesty and acts decisively and with a new self-knowledge when put to the test.
Brookner came to fiction late, having been an accomplished art historian, and her eye for visual detail informs her descriptive powers. She proved a prolific writer and Hilary Mantel paid her novels this insightful tribute: “Each book is a prayer bead on a string, and each prayer is a circular, circumspect prayer, a prayer and a protest and a charm against encroaching night.”
