Brief Lives - Paperback

The latest novel by the Booker Prize-winning author of Hotel du Lac chronicles an unlikely friendship between two very different women thrust together by their husbands' business partnership--and by a guilty secret. "Anita Brookner works a spell on the reader; being under it is both an education and a delight".--The Washington Post Book World.

Front Jacket

With this novel, Booker Prize-winning author Anita Brookner confirms her reputation as an unparalleled observer of social nuance and deeply felt longings. Brief Lives chronicles an unlikely friendship: that between the flamboyant, monstrously egocentric Julia and the modest, self-effacing Fay, who is at once fascinated and appalled by Julia's excesses. Thrust together by their husbands' business partnership -- and by a guilty secret -- Julia and Fay develop an intense bond that is nonetheless something less than intimacy, a relationship in which we see our own uneasy compromises, not only with other people, but with life itself.