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Hotel Du Lac: Complete & Unabridged (4 Cassettes) |  | Author: Anita Brookner
Creator: Anna Massey
Publisher: Chivers Audio Books
Category: Book
List Price: £30.49
Buy New: £10.25
as of 29/7/2010 14:46 MDT details
You Save: £20.24 (66%)
New (1) Used (2) from £7.75
Seller: Max Coburn
Rating:  10 reviews
Sales Rank: 1716740
Format: Audiobook
Media: Audio Cassette
Edition: Unabridged
Number Of Items: 4
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.8 x 1.3
ISBN: 0745158102
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780745158105
ASIN: 0745158102
Publication Date: May 1987
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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Amazon.co.uk Review
Edith Hope (a.k.a. romance author Veronica Wilde) has been banished by her friends to a stately hotel in Switzerland. During her stay she befriends some of the other guests, each of whom has his or her own tale. Edith struggles to come to terms with her career and love--the lack, the benefits, and the meaning thereof.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 10
 Hotel du Lac July 17, 2010
Joanne Watchorn (Luzern, CH)
I am in a Book Club in Switzerland, so it seemed fitting to read a book set in this country. Found it a bit slow to start. The way the author describes the guests of the hotel, it feels a bit like a "who dunnit" novel, I was waiting for someone to get bumped off in the study with a candlestick...!
I wouldnt call it a page turner (like other books I have read in the past) but it is a "nice" book to read.
I have read better books, although saying that, when we discussed it at our Book Club and heard other peoples input, I found myself liking it more!
I gave it a 6 out of 10.
 Subtle Booker Brilliance April 24, 2010
Simon Savidge Reads (London, UK)
I absolutely loved Anita Brookner's 1984 (I was two when this won) Man Booker Winner, seriously loved it. I can easily imagine this becoming a slightly underground classic in the future as the characters and story are just wonderful. Hotel Du Lac is the story of Edith Hope as she takes a break from the world and her writing of mildly successful romance novels. She has, it unfolds, been sent away by her best friend Penelope Milne who she is in disgrace of (along with a fair amount of her social circle) and would only be forgiven if she went to Switzerland to "disappear for a decent length of time and come back older, wiser and properly sorry". If you loved that line, like I did, then you will love all of the wording and wit Anita Brookner provides throughout a mere 180 pages.
Of course you then want to find out just what disgraceful act Edith has been apart of and as the novel and her character develop you soon realise it could be more than one thing. Once she is in the hotel though you also want to learn about all the stories of the other random guests who are staying in Switzerland `out of season'.
There is the fabulous Lady X or `the lady with the noisy dog who smoked endlessly and ate only ice cream and cake' who we learn to love and learn her real name is Monica, sent by her husband to stop eating and loose weight. We also meet Madame De Bonneuil who has been dumped there by her son who visits once a week whilst he and his wife, who hates her, spend all her money and live in her fabulous mansion. There are the fabulous and incredibly wealthy Iris and her daughter Jennifer Pusey who have come merely to shop... endlessly, and drink unbelievable quantities of champagne and gossip. They also like to think they are talk of the town and whilst Iris is her daughter Jennifer "inexpressive as a blank window" doesn't seem to be following her mothers lead, though there is a dark twist where she is concerned.
One final quest is Mr Neville who claims himself `a romantic' and thinks he knows just what Edith needs to sort her life out if only he can show her. As the obvious romance story evolves between the two characters I was initially touched and then started to get very disappointed in where the novel might be leading. I shouldn't have worried as Brookner pulls out a very final and very clever twist as well as finally letting us in on Edith's past.
I actually hugged this book when I had finished it and really wanted to start the whole thing all over again. It reminded me of the wit of lethal wit, scandal and romance of a Nancy Mitford novel only with modern twists and turns. It also looks at the roles of women at a time, I am guessing it is set in the late sixties early seventies though you are never sure, when rules and ways were changing and they had more options yet weren't really meant to use them.
I disagree with almost all the other reviews :-) August 14, 2009
emma who reads a lot (London)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
i really enjoyed this book, I didn't think it was dull, but nor did I think it was a delicately painted subtle little thing of beauty. I thought it was really funny, well-observed, and in fact the one person I do agree with is Dominic Swayne. Although I'm sad to hear that she never wrote such comedy again; I was imagining there was some rich vein there for me to tap into now. I'm just amazed that some readers didn't get the joke, I'm really amazed. I guess they just read it as a serious, pompous novel without the profound irony and narratorial skill that, for me, Brookner obviously has.
And for those who don't think it's meant to be funny... what about the little dog that wees on the stairs, and then the hotel manager who just shuts his eyes in disgust, it's such a funny image? What about Penelope, whose bed is covered in hundreds of little cushions "which proclaimed to the world at large 'I am a woman of exceptional femininity"? Eurgh! What about Mr Neville, who tells the heroine he is going to change her, having complained about her dress sense, to which she replies "If all it involves is giving away my cardigan, I feel I should tell you that I have another one at home." It's so dry, and so funny, I think it has a lot in common with Muriel Spark and is very well told and very moving.
 Wish I could put no stars!! April 29, 2009
bragadaccio (France)
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
I am at present 'ploughing' through this book (in spite of the fact that it's quite short!!) 130 pages so far, and I haven't laughed once yet! What is more, no action either! Can't see what everyone else finds good about it! (And why it's a Penguin ...) The most boring book I've read in a long time!
 Not her best by any means... September 24, 2008
HexOmega (England)
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
Anita Brookner has a rare gift for portraying loneliness, exclusion, repression and so on, and for exposing the subtle psychological manipulations and maneouverings in human relationships, but they are scarcely in evidence in this lightweight and romantic offering. Her infatuation with the manners of the upper middle classes has always been a bit of a problem, and some of the characters at the Hotel du Lac are ridiculous in their pretentious and empty headed strategies, which the protagonist details in her unsent letters with an equally empty headed obsessiveness. The romantic interest, Mr Neville, is a laughable caricature, and her longing for the married and unavailable David comes across as the rather bored and stupid longing of a woman with enough intelligence to know better. Infidelity was hardly shocking when this book was written, but for us to sanction and approve it we need a bit more grit and angst and passion. It already seems quite dated in style, a slightly risque Jane Austen without the technical skill, and for Edith to credit herself with any kind of resemblence to Virginia Woolf is literary blasphemy! Brookner has written much better and much more movingly than this. Although her writing is technically excellent, here she seems to have had in mind a rather regrettable section of the mass market - the bored bourgeoise housewife preoccupied with rich men and beautiful clothes. Dear dear.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 10
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