Jeffrey Keeten's Reviews > Strangers

”But life, as he had discovered, was not like a novel. Or perhaps he had mistaken fiction for truth, or, more likely, mistaken truth for a more thrilling, more authentic form of fiction.”

I’ve often thought how easier life would be if I could write the dialogue for the people in my life. They get it wrong so much of the time that I often wonder why I bother with them at all. I can’t fire them, though even if I could, I’d only replace them with other people equally inept at saying the right thing that will keep the plot moving at the proper pace. Life is not a play, a novel, or a movie. It is actually rather messy.

With lots of uhhhhs and ahhhhs and ohhhhs.

Paul Sturgis has managed, not by design, to arrive at retirement without snagging a wife. He has a failing that, though properly identified, mystifies him as to why it is a disqualifying attribute for being one half of a blissful marriage.

”He had acquired girlfriends, for his hawkish looks promised a favourable outcome to each entanglement, and fell in love regularly, though never entirely wholeheartedly, longing for something more extreme, more transforming, than evenings at the theatre, dinners in restaurants, and visits to his flat, which temporary company did little to enhance, until the day, or rather the night when he was told of his failing, a character assassination that seemed to promise a lifetime of loneliness.”

You see Paul’s problem is a dastardly one. It is one that all men, by the time they reach a certain age, realize that, once you have been categorized as such by a woman, it is the kiss of death to a relationship. Yes, when she mutters those terrible words:

You are simply too nice.

In Paul’s case, they usually get hurled at him with a baffling level of anger, as if the woman knows that she is kicking a dog for laying his head on her knee. It is frustrating to women, as well as to “nice” men, reaching this perplexing impasse. Needless say, there are many women, as well, who marry perfectly nice men and are content with their relationship. I’ve never personally met these women, but I’m told they exist. The problem is that nice is perceived as boring, so if nice=boring and this is the dating stage, what would a lifetime of marriage look like? Boring, more boring, head banging against a door boring.

Thank goodness Paul has his books.

”At the sight of a bookshop he felt a desire to be in a closed space and went in, though he had little need for more books. The books he remembered had nothing to do with the life he now led, yet they promised so much in the way of revelation. This too was misleading: revelation only benefited the teller, rarely his audience. Yet such revelations that stayed with him remained his only touchstone of authenticity.”

Novels, and I hate to say this, might be part of Paul’s problem. In the controlled environment of a writer guided plot where all is revealed, the dialogue sparkles, misunderstandings are only plot devices that lead the protagonist to an emotional, music soaring, pulse pounding, sunset setting, lip locking, tongue tangling, boy gets girl (or any of the other numerous variations of hook ups) moment of pure ecstacy. Every loose string of the plot is gathered up in a nice bow. The reader does not have to wonder if Jack rides off into the sunset with Jane or if they will live happily ever after because the writer tells them they do.

Well, not the novels I read, not that I don’t mind some escapism, but I also enjoy novels that reflect real life. Things don’t always work out, and life is full of loose strings. Anita Brookner knows about the foibles of life.

Though I will say, Paul does read Henry James, and James took almost as much malicious joy as George R. R. Martin in torturing his reading public. Maybe if Paul had read Henry James as more of an instruction manual he might have been more prepared for the disappointments of life.

Paul has another problem, besides being too nice. He is in remarkably good health and is staring down the barrel of several more decades of a perfectly safe, boring, lonely existence. To stave off pondering the inevitability of his life Paul decides to shake things up and departs on a vacation to Venice to at least temporarily escape that appalling flat he bought for its trendy location. He has loathed it since the minute he first opened the door to look at it. What a ridiculous thing to find himself stuck in an ugly flat for the remaining days of his life. It is actually oddly humorous.

In Venice, he meets this vivacious divorcee who has spurned her husband because she caught him frolicking with a young woman. It seems like a small basis to throw a marriage away in Paul’s mind, but then he understands the difficulty of obtaining and keeping a relationship. As Paul gets to know Vicky better, he starts to realize how rootless her life is without a proper place to live. She relies on the kindness of strangers (Paul is saddled with bags of her luggage). To set Paul’s teeth even more on edge, she is always scheming about grand plans to go hither or yon without even a proper plan as to how to make it so.

She is a horrid, completely self-centered creature, completely unsuitable for Paul, and yet he can’t spurn her. She may prove to have a rare value indeed. To further complicate Paul’s suddenly topsy turvy existence, an old flame, one of the women who hurled his nice attributes back in his face at the vitriolic level of Taming of the Shrew, falls back into his life, much more subdued and even remembering their time together with some fondness.

So will Paul end up with Vicky or back with Sarah? Or will he catch a midnight train to some remote destination to regain some control back in his life? Loneliness can start to seem like a virtuous, wonderous existence.

Anita Brookner is known for her exploration of characters who feel isolated and abandoned by society. I’ve seen some reviewers who say nothing happens in her novels. I understand that not all great books are for all readers, but who has not experienced loneliness? I’ve always been surrounded by friends and family and well wishers, but regardless of whether I’m sitting in a room full of people or knocking around in the hallways of my own mind in an empty room, I know what loneliness is. A Brookner novel can sometimes be the perfect antidote for my own feelings of seclusion. There are times when I can walk a mile in the shoes of one of the well conceived Brookner characters with ease and too much comfort.

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