AJ Dunn Reads

  Hotel Du Lac By Anita Brookner Edith Hope, a romance novelist, has been exiled temporarily by her friends to the Hotel du Lac after an affair with a married man which led to her leaving her own fiancé at the altar. At the hotel Edith is expected think about her life, her actions, and to work on her current novel. While their, instead of working on her novel, Edith spends her time moping, interrogating the other guests (mostly women), and composing letters that she will not send to David, the object of her infidelities. Slowly, she is drawn into acquaintance with these women who bluntly, sometimes cruelly it seems, tell her what kind of woman she appears to be, demeaning her looks and clothing, yet wanting her attention. In their company Edith seems to come around, to begin to liven up. Then one of the guests, a Mr. Neville whom all of the women seem to fancy in one way or another, makes Edith an absurd proposal of marriage out of the blue. He claims he can make her the kind of wo...