A Friend from England (Vintage Contemporaries) - Softcover

"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)

In a tale of gradual self-revelation, Rachel Kennedy, her friend Harriet, and Harriet's parents live desperately ordinary lives, unable to take the chances necessary to find self-fulfillment. Reprint. 10,000 first printing.