The Bay of Angels Anita Brookner Penguin, 217pp, £6.99 ISBN 0670896624
Anita Brookner's 20th novel is set in London and southern France, some time in the 1950s. But in fact, we are nowhere so much as Brooknerland. Our narrator, Zoe, and her widowed mother wait in splendid "ivory tower isolation" for a man to furnish them with a fairy-tale ending. When he duly arrives in the form of Simon, an elderly benefactor, their lives are changed for ever. Simon whisks her home-loving mother off to foreign climes while, back in England, Zoe enters the spirit of free love by letting her unfaithful boyfriend walk all over her. Such happiness is naturally short-lived. Old Simon takes a fatal tumble, and Zoe's mum (developing a handy heart murmur) goes into terminal decline.
In true Brookner tradition, young Zoe is left to pick up the pieces. But our lucky heroine finds consolation in an ugly, authoritarian doctor. Brookner's graceful, refined prose is in perfect harmony with her genteel, melancholy worlds. Moments of comic sharpness aside, this latest novel is as exquisitely dreary as ever.
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