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A Closed Eye Paperback – January 4, 1993

by Anita Brookner (Author)
4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 87 ratings
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In A Closed Eye, Anita Brookner explores, with compassionate insight and stylistic brilliance, the self-inflicted paradoxes in the life of Harriet Lytton, a woman whose powers of submissiveness and self-denial are suddenly tested by the dizzying prospect of sexual awakening.

In Harriers gallant struggle with the single great temptation that comes her way, Brookner creates a hauntingly flawed heroine and a study in the evasions and disappointments that make up all our lives.
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Previous page
  1. Print length
    272 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Vintage
  4. Publication date
    January 4, 1993
  5. Dimensions
    5.15 x 0.6 x 8 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0679743405
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0679743408
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Brookner portrays another repressed woman whose yearning for love is stifled in by convention.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"Anita Brookner has staked out a distinctive territory...and made it clear that she is one of the finest novelists of her generation."-- The New York Times

"If Henry James were around, the only writer he'd be reading with complete approval would be Anita Brookner. A Closed Eye is [a] marvel of ease and clarity, and precision." -- The New York Times Book Review

"[Brookner's] prose is famously graceful, her understanding of human nature always keen .... A Closed Eye exhibits all of her elegance, subtlety of perception, and wistful tenderness" -- Newsday

"Stiletto-sharp powers of observation...[Brookner] offers amusement akin to the slightly illicit pleasure of sitting down to lunch with a clever and malicious gossip. Indiscretions will be revealed, unhappiness and tragedy hinted at, and you will be...hungry for more." -- Chicago Tribune

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Vintage (January 4, 1993)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 272 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0679743405
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0679743408
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 7.9 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.15 x 0.6 x 8 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 87 ratings

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Anita Brookner

Anita Brookner

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Customer reviews

4.2 out of 5 stars
4.2 out of 5
87 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

L. Farwell
5.0 out of 5 stars Clever and very British
Reviewed in the United States on February 20, 2018
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Hard to beat Anita Brookner. She excels at the details that seem inconsequential until the story progresses. A real master of cleverness.
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5.0 out of 5 stars Xlnt
Reviewed in the United States on May 6, 2015
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Humanity. Most excellently expressed. Anita writes from the soul. Ready to read this again in case I missed something wonderfully illuminating.
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meeah
5.0 out of 5 stars This is the way a life ends...
Reviewed in the United States on February 23, 2013
"Thus are lives lost, through what must be despair at knowing oneself too weak to deal with the dangers, the choices." --Anita Brookner

A Closed Eye opens with a middle-aged woman writing a letter to her goddaughter back in England. She invites the young woman, the daughter of an old friend, to come stay with her in Switzerland for a short vacation. We'll wait until the last chapter of the novel for Lizzie's answer.

But first, the story of one woman's lifetime...

Harriet Lytton is the daughter of elegant, beautiful, completely self-absorbed and immature parents. As a result, she hasn't had much of a childhood herself. Old before her time, she's at the same time spectacularly unworldly. Before she's half aware of what's happening, Harriet is safely married off to an older man, a contemporary of her parents.

It's a familiar situation in Brookner's fiction, one to which she returns again and again: the woman who has never taken chances, who's always played it safe, trying, now that it's almost too late, to escape her life of quiet desperation.

Married to chubby, complacent, predictable Freddie, Harriet fantasizes about having a real love affair with a daring, dangerous, sexual man who can't be tamed--a man like Jack, for instance, who happens to be her best friend's fiancee. Anyone can see that Jack is trouble, that his marriage to Tessa is doomed to failure, destined to destroy Tessa, and so it does. Still, as the years pass, Harriet finds her fantasies turning to Jack. Just once she'd like to have a Jack in her life. Now a mother herself, Harriet contemplates adultery, edges up to the precipice, stares down into the abyss, tempted, the dizzying fall into experience beckoning...

Then tragedy strikes. Then it strikes again. Harriet has hardly recovered when it strikes once more.

The question now is whether these tragedies serve as a goad to long-delayed action, or do they sap whatever strength Harriet has to act at all, burying her instead under a paralyzing burden of guilt and sorrow.

As usual with Brookner, the answer is neither straightforward nor predictable. The dilemma is illuminated and amplified by the difference in personality between her friend Tessa's daughter, the reserved, bookish Lizzie, and Harriet's own daughter, the dazzling Imogen.

Thinking of Imogen, Harriet reflects:
"Immy demanded only the best, was impatient only with the second best, required from life only what she saw it could deliver, was not fearful, shy, self-effacing, knew, with some scorn, how meekness could conceal a certain holy vanity, preferred vanity unadorned and unashamed, was in fact shameless."

While, conversely, we learn that Lizzie had no "conviction that a place was reserved for her in this world, lacked benevolent elders from whom she might have inherited some kind of grace or endowment, some indulgence, some love. She had been wary since earliest childhood, eternally on the lookout for danger, or for threats to an existence which she strove to make as circumscribed as possible, as if only by being inconspicuous would she be allowed to continue."

If Brookner teaches nothing else it's that reticence and timidity and voluntary self-effacement even with the noblest of intentions wins one nothing in this world whatsoever--except, perhaps, the private satisfactions of martyrdom and a hope (ever unfulfilled) of a reward in a future life--either this life, or, better yet, if anyone can still manage a belief in it, a life to come

So we come full circle at the end of A Closed Eye. Harriet, now older, wiser, sadder generously seeks to be of benefit to her oddball, out-of-place goddaughter, a young woman just starting out in life with whom she feels a natural affinity that she never felt with her own daughter. But does Harriet really have anything to offer Lizzie? Or is it already too late for either woman to change. Has it, in fact, always been too late?

In A Closed Eye, Brookner has both eyes wide open. She's written a profound meditation on human nature that is as lyrical as it is honest, as illuminating as it is disturbing.
6 people found this helpful
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Peter E. McGinn
3.0 out of 5 stars Didn't connect with the main character, but at least I finished this book of hers!
Reviewed in the United States on July 5, 2016
This is the second book by this author I have tried to read and this time I finished it. I do find her writing heavy slogging at times, with her paragraphs that last entire pages, it seems. Look, I get it; it is literature not beach reading. I have read and enjoyed Dickens and Trollope and many other classic authors. But most of their long descriptions seems to be about people, places and situations. With Ms. Brookner it seems like it's mostly about the character's stream of consciousness: feelings, thoughts and remembering the past.

But like I said, I did finish this book. I think it is because there was more dialogue in it than there was in the first book I tried. When I write my own novels, I try to include a lot of dialogue because I feel that it helps flesh out the characters just as much as a good description does. I am sure I would have enjoyed this book more if I had connected with the main character. It jut didn't happen. Actually I came to appreciate her husband more, despite the fact that my view of him through her eyes wasn't at all complimentary.

I will not reveal a major plot twist in the book, but will only say that it seems to do nothing to provide an opportunity for growth or development. It just casts a loud over the proceedings. Was that the point?

I am not going to give up on Ms. Brookner, however. I have several of her books and I'm going to keep going with her. Perhaps my hopes were raised too much by one reviewer's description of her as a modern-day Jane Austin. I definitely do not see that yet.
2 people found this helpful
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HORAK
5.0 out of 5 stars A sharp portrait of loneliness
Reviewed in the United States on January 27, 2008
Harriet Lytton is a naïve and undemanding woman who expects very little of life and that is what she receives. Married to a respectable man old enough to be her father, Harriet's only taste for passion comes when she meets television journalist Jack Peckham, the unruly and attractive husband of her friend Tessa.
Tessa and Harriet have for many years been bound together by their childhood friendship and the imposed alliance of their two daughters, Imogen and Lizzie. But events conspire to shatter the gentle rhythm of Harriet's settled life. Sadly constrained by her own cautious decisions, she faces the cruellest losses of all: those of hope and desire.
An altogether convincing portrait of failed love and solitude, reminiscent of so many of Anita Brookner's protagonists.
3 people found this helpful
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Christina Giulianotti
2.0 out of 5 stars A depressingly boring book
Reviewed in the United States on June 30, 2010
I must be one of the few people who found this book to be boring and depressing. Although the characters are well drawn, each has a tedious and troublesome life making for a rather sad and long winded story.
2 people found this helpful
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Sara A
3.0 out of 5 stars A difficult read
Reviewed in the United States on March 6, 2013
I found this book to be difficult to read. It did contain some excellent descriptions and in depth character development/analysis but this made the book redundant and tedious as the descriptions were over done and repeated often. I found myself skipping paragraphs and even some pages in their entirety in order to get through this book.
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Top reviews from other countries

JOHN WHITTLE
5.0 out of 5 stars My 12th Brookner!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 30, 2021
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As always, Anita Brookner is a pure pleasure to read. Loved this.
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Elmas
4.0 out of 5 stars Classic Brookner formula .
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 3, 2022
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Are children that ungrateful and critical of their parents ?
I enjoyed the beautiful writing and locations . And Mrs Weatherby !
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Jo
5.0 out of 5 stars Jo
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 28, 2020
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Just read anita brookner she is up there with the author elizabeth taylor.
One person found this helpful
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mr.marcus
3.0 out of 5 stars Love her
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 13, 2013
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I do. I'd love that self-sufficient self-constricted life of her characters but don't have the money or the inner life and way too many characters to deal with. I bought and read this so long ago I've completely forgotten, as I've read about 12 of her books. Therefore it must be about some young plain broad with wealthy parents, who croak and leave her rich, or a middle aged plain woman, whose husband does the honourable thing and croaks, leaving her loaded in Lower belgravia or South kensington, or an old guy wandering around South Kensington and Venice, also discreetly wealthy, connecting/not connecting. Ah I remember now. Plain young woman with a prettier vibrant friend and a troubled daughter. Intriguing ending this one. I think it's the first one where the central character goes a little mad, and a longer timeline than usual Brookner.
6 people found this helpful
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L. A. Mellor
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 18, 2016
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great
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