The Debut Hardcover – April 1, 1981

More of the same of Anita Brookner -- if you like her other books you will like this. "The Debut" does not pick up the protagonist Ruth's story at age 40. It is a flashback, about Ruth's "debut," her effort at trying to break away from her parents. The novel details her upbringing to age 23. Or rather, she describes vignettes from and feelings about her upbringing, which seem like a load of cognitive dissonance to this reader. She describes her parents with a pitiless eye for detail, but, are we are supposed to believe in her stated feeling for them? How will this all develop?Then both her parents start to age, badly. I guess they had Ruth late, because she is only 23, and her father is in his sixties. Her mother is "barely sixty." Ruth leaves them to try living in Paris and has a half-baked affair with someone unsuitable. This dissonance is the core of what confuses me about Brookner novels -- the Brookner voice. Or maybe it is what makes me keep turning the pages. I want the main character's attitude, motivations, explained. Brookner often doesn't do that. I never rooted for the main character because she is so annoying. But the book is well-written and had some witty observations mixed in with the general airlessness of the narrator's perceptions.

I first came by Anita Brookner via her Booker Prize winning novel, Hotel Du Lac; purchased in my favorite bookstore in Paris, which is the setting for part of this novel. I'm sure some might debate the technical merits of this one against her award winner, but I found them both quite enjoyable and insightful; the differentiation I'll leave to the literary specialists.Speaking of which, the protagonist, Dr Ruth Weiss, is a Professor and literary specialist on Honoré de Balzac. The first chapter depicts her in that mid-life role, but the vast majority of the book concerns how she assumed that role, her "debut" into the adult world, as she managed to shake off the influences of a highly dysfunctional family situation, and found solace in literature. Brookner introduces one of the central themes early, in the form of non-translated French, a quote from Balzac's "Eugenie Grandet." Like many other English writers of a certain class, she assumes that her readers understand the language of the diplomatic world (well, at least of the 18th Century). And if you'll excuse my French, as it were, she states the fear of many a woman who worries that her wit, intelligence and character just might not be enough for him; that the deciding factor will be her physical beauty.Ruth's mother, Helen, is an actress passed her prime, endlessly reminiscing of her triumphs, on stage, and sometimes in bed, and now enveloped in hypochondria. Her father, George, used to own and run a bookstore, but has now taken to some modest philandering, rationalized since it is not fully consummated. There is the live-in "housekeeper" of sorts, Mrs. Cutler, who provides a useful foil. Ruth does escape to Paris, to continue her work on Balzac, and is taken advantage of by various so-called friends. Still, she struggles, maintains her dignity, and comes of age, but there is the constant vortex of doom, her family situation, and their needs, that pull her back to England.Brookner delightfully re-packages an aphorism by Oscar Wilde: "Work, she thought, is a paradox; it is the sort of thing people do out of sheer inability to do anything else. Work is the chosen avocation of people who have no other calls on their time." The author's core strengths (as they say in business) are observations on the male-female relationships. Consider: "She studied the couple closely, as if they were an unknown species. They were, in fact, an unknown species. They were happy." Or, "Hugh also took Ruth back to her room one day and started to make love to her; she was so amazed that she forgot all the routine objections." Throughout the novel, Ruth receives many an unsolicited "improvement" comment from the more worldly-wise Anthea. Finally, Ruth asks her, concerning those aforementioned relationships: "Is it all a game, then?" Anthea looked sadly back. "Only if you win," was her reply. "If you lose, it's far more serious." Finally, in terms of quotes, Brookner might be considered a traitor, at least to her gender, for this one: "Some women take advantage. Once they're married, and they've got a good husband, they think they can do what they like. And if they take him for granted"- she paused significantly-"they just don't bother any more."Overall, Brookner weaves an excellent story, erudite, well-placed, and informed on the human condition. The author's style is a rare mixture of understated British humor surrounding a tale that goes deep into the heart of sadness. A marvelous 5-star read that has pushed me to read Eugénie Grandet, if not even more of Balzac.

I have all of Anita Brookner's books and I re-read them periodically. As well, I study her style, vocabulary, and everything else I can cull from her interesting stories.

For a novel of only 192 pages, THE DEBUT is surprisingly multi-faceted and complex (though it reads effortlessly). For an author's debut novel, it is astonishingly good.The beginning and end of the novel - the front and back covers of it, as it were - feature Ruth Weiss as she is now: forty, an academic, and an authority on Honoré de Balzac. She appears to be a stereotypical character of academia - one of those colorless and seemingly sexless female scholars, married to her discipline but in real life destined to spinsterhood. However, the bulk of the novel (pages 11 to 191) provides the back-story; it tells of how Ruth came into the role in life she now occupies. It turns out that she too has lived and loved. One lesson might well be: Don't judge a book by its cover.As things happened, much of her life was consumed by her parents. Both were incredibly self-centered, and their self-absorption sucked the life out of one another and, nearly, Ruth as well. Near the end of the novel, after her parents' follies and infirmities have pulled Ruth back to drab London from the life-as-an-assured-single-girl she was forging for herself in Paris, Ruth sighs: "I can't nurse them through this. It's about time they behaved like adults." But then author Brookner comments sardonically: "Ruth still believed that adults adhered to a superior standard of behavior." That is another lesson: Many (most?) adults are self-centered buffoons.That lesson is imparted over and over in this novel of understated but acerbic wit. The "sly, detached humor" of Anita Brookner has often been compared to that of Barbara Pym, but the humor of THE DEBUT is more caustic, more barbed than that of Pym's. It reminds me instead of Kingsley Amis. Further, there is a sober and bittersweet dimension to THE DEBUT and the one other novel of Brookner's ("Hotel du Lac") that I have read. She is a novelist of considerable merit - easy to read but not easy to forget. I will return for more.

Plots are often similar but her grasp of the craft of writing is so mind blowing, I put her on a level equal to Hemingway.