Undue Influence

by Anita Brookner

Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Featured image for Undue Influence

This book seems distinctly anachronous. Anita Brookner’s single lady with her own means, inherited London flat, a bit of a job in a bookshop that she doesn’t really need, deceased parents etc seems to belong to a different era than the 1999 world where this book was published. But in among the distinct lack of plot here there’s a Big Issue seller, answering machines and other things that place the book in a time it seems not to fit into very well. It’s all distinctly old fashioned. On the whole I quite like Brookner’s careful take on the world and the measured approach of her characters but this one was just a bit too nothing-y in the end.