A Friend from England

“Anita Brookner’s remarkable seventh novel will be remembered as one of her best.” –Woman’s Journal"What increasingly marks Anita Brookner out as an especially fine novelist . . . is the marriage in her work between beauty of expression and infinite emotional pain, mitigated by irony. The prose rings so very true; her sentences have an effortless design." –The Spectator"Admiration for the sureness of touch with which these two women and their little circle are brought to life is, I would guess, likely to be unanimous." –Financial Times“Sort of sneaks up on the reader, providing a deep, careful, haunting exploration of the human personality.” –Elle"Sparkling readability." –Mail on Sunday“Brookner is an artist of an exceptional purity.” –The New York Times“Anita Brookner works a spell on the reader; being under it is both an education and a delight.” –The Washington Post Book World“Brookner is a writer of great skill and precision. Passages of brilliant writing abound, hard-won insights that startle us with Brookner’s clarity and succinct intelligence.”–Los Angeles Times Book Review“Few contemporary novelists can match Ms. Brookner’s consistently high level of achievement: the penetration of her vision, the sense of conviction in what she is doing, and the unforced elegance of her writing.” –The Wall Street Journal"Anita Brookner is a novelist of astonishing technical skill, and A Friend from England is a very good book . . . if people who talk of her ‘limitations’ had themselves one tenth of her scope, ah, what critics they would be." –The Independent (London)