When Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner arrived, I was intrigued as it is not the sort of book I would normally read. I knew it was an award winner and is highly regarded in literary circles. I normal read crime/thriller with a bit of Douglas Kennedy thrown in for good measure.

There is not much of a plot, a not so young woman who writes romance novels is banished to the Hotel du Lac for one month for the horrendous crime of not showing up to her own wedding. Whilst at the hotel, she meets fellow guests and hotel workers who keep her and the reader guessing.

I started with an open mind, and whilst the writing is very good and there is subtle humour, it is a book that for me meanders along with out going anywhere. I am glad I stuck with it, but overall the book did not have an impact on me. Perhaps I am spoiled by more modern novels. But what do I know, I gave it to my mother-in-law and she loves it.

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I found this to be a thoroughly enjoyable book from beginning to end. Extremely well written and thought provoking.

Just how much do we really know about each other?

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Muriel Spark, The Finishing School

Many things are coming to an end at the faux-bohemian College Sunrise: not just the education of a motley bunch of multi-national teenagers, but also the marriage of the proprietors, Rowland and Nina, and Rowland’s grip on sanity. It also marks another ending too: Muriel Spark, at the age of 87, published this novel in 2004. It was her last work. It is a testament to her vitality that the novel is as witty, sly and mordantly funny as the books for which she is most famous, Memento Mori, and, of course, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.

The major conflict in the novel is between Rowland, whose youthful success as a playwright he cannot now replicate, and Chris, precocious and faintly sinister red-haired prodigy, whose half-written novel about Mary, Queen of Scots triggers a bout of uncontrollable jealousy in the older man.

All this detail and much more is deftly delineated in the opening pages of this slight but immensely enjoyable novel. Spark’s reputation for a kind of elegant nastiness, most obviously on show in novels such as The Abbess of Crewe and The Ballad of Peckham Rye, is certainly sustained here. The lives of the characters are sharply observed, with the telling detail often being used to skewer the pretensions of her cast of minor European royals, county-set girls, ambitious youths and phlegmatic locals. The running joke throughout is that Rowland, consumed utterly by his jealousy of Chris, has writer’s block, but is obliged to teach creative writing.

Thos reviews that claim this is a satire on the publishing industry seem wide of the mark to me. True, a couple of publishers are exposed as shallow and grasping, but then, no-one emerges as wholly pleasant, as Spark anatomises the rivalries, ambitions and narcissism of her entirely believable characters.

This novel is not great literature, yet it is compelling, a genuine page-turner that can be read in a day with comfort. What keeps you turning the pages is the sheer pleasure of discovering what the next development will be in this fascinating tale of obsession and jealousy.

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