A Friend from England

by Anita Brookner

Book Overview

In one of her most delicate and suspenseful novels to date, Anita Brookner brings us an exquisite story of friendship and duty. Rachel Kennedy and Oscar Livingston were not precisely friends or... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0394563875
• ISBN13: 9780394563879
• Release Date: February 1988
• Publisher: Pantheon Books
• Length: 205 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.

Customer Reviews

The subtle perception of feelings and relationships

Anita Brookner is a master in detailing the perception of feelings and material realities, and above all on the intricate subtleties of human relationships. Usually the drama in her work relates to one or two close relationships .Here the narrator of the story thirty- two year old Rachel is closely connected with the Livingstone family, the loving couple at its heart and their single twenty- seven year old daughter, Heather. The story unfolds as Heather first marries unsuccessfully and then dramatically makes a second alliance which moves her far from her parents. The cloistered and controlled life of Rachel is contrasted with the liberating action of Heather. As with so many of Brookner's works one feels a great intelligence, delicacy and skill operating on a smallness of souls.

A novel full of melancholy

Rachel Kennedy is a solitary and self-sufficient woman who likes to lead a well-ordered life free of commitments and emotional turmoil. She owns a small bookshop in London and one day befriends Heather Livingstone and her parents Oscar and Dorrie - a mutual fondness which is a puzzle given Rachel's character. It soon becomes clear to Heather that Oscar and Dorrie think her a suitable companion for Heather, a kind of elder sister or guardian angel. Their good daughter, who comes home to them every weekend and telephones every day, is the world to them and they wish her still theirs and somebody else's as well, somebody whose supervision could replace their own. To them, Rachel could be Heather's passport to the world. So Oscar and Dorrie regard Rachel as a chaperone for Heather. And to Rachel her odd relationship with the Livingstones is of great value too. For her they are fixed points of reference in a slipping universe, abiding by rules which everybody else has broken. It is when Heather decides to become engaged to Michael Sandberg, an awkward and untrustworthy man, that Rachel realises that her power over her friend is limited. The fate of this ill-assorted couple is bound to be doomed... Well drawn characters, plausible situations and sound psychological motives are the strengths of "A Friend From England". A quiet, atmospheric novel as only Mrs Brookner can write them.