Book Reviews
Any reader who has visited the worlds of Brookner's two dozen novels knows that most of the action takes place beneath the surface of everyday activity.... A familiar complaint about Brookner is that she tells the same story over and over. Not true at all, as I see it, except for her uniform interest in exploring interior states of being. Strangers provides a good example of how distinctive her fiction can be, without sacrificing any of her usual depth.
Donna Rifkind - Washington Post
Few novelists can stand with Anita Brookner when it comes to the interior revelations of the human heart.... Every page has a felicity of wording that makes you want to...underline passages that you don’t want to forget.
Seattle Times
As Brookner delicately parses the harsh diminishments of age, and the terrible fear that one will end one’s life at the mercy of strangers, she expresses exquisite psychological understand-ing and philosophical grace, dry-sherry humor, and the coy hope that forbearance can in the long run deliver liberation. —Donna Seaman
Booklist
Brookner's 24th book is an often monotonous meditation on an elderly man's solitary existence. Much of the first several chapters are dedicated to 72-year-old Paul Sturgis's stuffy reflections on his attitudes toward life and loneliness. The narrative shows some promise when Sturgis meets recently divorced Vicky Gardner on a trip to Venice, but their ensuing relationship—in Venice and later, when they both return to London—is mired in a painfully polite restraint. As if in a parody of English manners, Vicky and Sturgis labor over countless afternoon teas without forming anything resembling human contact. Vicky often approaches moments of vulnerable honesty, only to act appalled if he shows any interest in these rare glimpses of humanity. Sturgis's interactions with his ex-lover Sarah, meanwhile, are slightly more candid, but these merely highlight Sturgis's painfully apparent dull formality. (They also give him more material to pontificate over.) While the novel happens in the current day, the occasional mobile phone feels as out of place as it would in, say, one of the Henry James novels that could be the inspiration for this tedious exercise in drawing-room politesse.
Publishers Weekly
Paul Sturgis is another solitary Brookner protagonist who bears his loneliness with a patient stoicism while also puzzling over how his life has come to such a desultory pass. A retired banker, Paul fills his quiet days rereading Henry James, walking through his London neighborhood, and paying semi-regular visits to his only relative, the widow of a cousin. His past associations with women, who considered him "too nice," were short-lived and unsuccessful. So it comes as a welcome surprise when two women enter his uneventful life. First, Vicki Gardner sits beside him on a Christmas trip to Venice, where both are planning to escape the lonely holiday; thus they launch a quasi-friendship. Upon his return home, Paul runs into Sarah, a former girlfriend, who is lately widowed and suffering from poor health. Verdict: What tension this novel possesses revolves around whether Paul will take up with either Vicki or Sarah, both unsuitable for him. Strictly for those readers who still appreciate the simple gentility of Brookner's novels.
Barbara Love - Library Journal
Brookner tells the story of bookish retiree Paul Sturgis. Most of the novel takes place within Paul's mind, which is also where most of Paul's life takes place. Since leaving his job and the comfort of routine, Paul finds himself with only one ritual—occasional visits with Helena, the widow of his cousin and thus a distant relative, but apparently his only living one. Neither of them seems to enjoy the visits much, though they provide human connection in a world otherwise filled with strangers. Two chance encounters promise to enliven Paul's existence, or threaten to complicate it. On a trip to Venice to avoid Helena's annual Christmas invitation, he meets Vicky Gardner, a vivacious woman some 20 years younger. "Women, after pursuit on his part, had found him disappointing in a way that he had never fully understood," muses Paul, yet Vicky doesn't. Or maybe he doesn't give her the chance. Or maybe she's so engulfed by the complications of her life—her recent divorce, her rootlessness bordering on homelessness—that she simply doesn't realize how disappointing a relationship with Paul might be. They continue to meet back home in London, complicating Paul's life in a way that he occasionally finds stimulating but more often uncomfortable. Another chance encounter offers another complication, when he runs into Sarah, one of the women who had found him disappointing, and still does. Yet Sarah was one of only two girlfriends he had ever been serious about. He feels torn between his past with Sarah and whatever future he might have with Vicky, while recognizing that "a life lived purely in the mind, as he seemed to have lived his own, would seem not only without interest but bizarre, unnatural. Free to do nothing, a retiree bores himself and others, including the reader.
Kirkus Reviews