Latecomers

By Anita Brookner

Book Overview

In Latecomers the author of the bestselling Hotel Du Lac extends her range to produce a glowing masterpiece about the ambiguous pleasures of friendship and domesticity. Hartmann and Fibich are "latecomers" to England, brought over as children from Nazi Germany. No two men could be more dissimilar: Hartmann is an expansive, deliberately unreflective voluptuary; Fibich, the ascetic, lives in a perpetual swoon of homesickness and terror. But as imagined by Anita Brookner, their fifty-year friendship becomes a transcendently funny and touching model for the ways in which human beings come to terms with the tragedy of living.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0679726683
• ISBN13: 9780679726685
• Release Date: February 1990
• Publisher: Vintage
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.67 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.3" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

A gentle and moving novel

Thomas Fibich and Thomas Hartman, now in their late middle age, have been friends since their early childhood when they came to England from Germany. They successfully run a photocopying business although their respective characters are quite different. Hartman is the more dynamic, decisive and ebullient man. Fibich is an abstracted and uncommunicative man but trustworthy and honourable at work. The story tells about Fibich's and Hartman's past, their marriage respectively to Christine and Yvette, the birth and the character of their children, their achievements, failures and hopes now that they are growing old. A novel of much charm, depth and compassionate understanding. The characters are moving and their treatment imaginative and full of insight. The novel is read by Andrew Sachs for Chivers Audiobooks. His reading is very pleasant to listen to.

Soulmates

When i read Hotel du Lac, by the same author, i dubbed the novel 'Hotel du Lack', because i found it to be short on redeeming qualities. This book, on the other hand, is very satisfying. The two main characters, Hartmann and Fibich, are children in Nazi Germany when they are smuggled to England. They both arrive at a boarding school, where they endure not just the regular hardships expected in any boarding school situation, but the stigma of being German in post-WWII England. Having no one to turn but each other for support, they form a bond stronger than if they were brothers. Their personalities are completely opposite. Hartmann does not care to reminisce about the past, and is very successful at banning any negative or depressing memory. Even the woman he chooses to marry is a perfect example of vacuity. Fibich, on the other hand, is tormented by a past he cannot exactly put together, and toys with the constant idea of a trip to Berlin, to find his roots. At the same time, he is terrified of the future, and cannot seem to enjoy anything. His wife is melancholy personified. The book relates the two men's beginnings, their youth, and in summary the development of their 50-year friendship. This is not an action-packed novel, and in fact there is very little dialog, so this may not be the best choice for someone looking for a dynamic novel. However, this is a very touching portray of a friendship, where wedding vows were not uttered, but were practiced.