Rating: 
Summary: Hotel du Lack!
Review: The anti-heroine of the book, Edith, describes her hotel room as drab. She might as well have been describing the whole novel. There are no redeeming qualities here. There is not a single lovable character in the entire story. These are our choices: Mrs. Pusey and her daughter, both of them so divine that probably do not need to ever go to the bathroom, Monica and her obnoxious dog, the caricature of Mme. de Bonneuil, the hotelier and his airs of grandeur, and slimy Mr. Neville. We also hear about Penelope, who happens to be Edith's neighbor and best friend, and we can only feel sorry for Edith. Of course, that sorrow lasts for about 2 seconds, because Edith is a vocational doormat. The descriptions of place are stuffy, and the sky is gray all the time! The ending is depressing, because nothing happens to Edith. She does not become a better, stronger person after her vacation. She stays the same way, being a passive, boring pushover. What I want to know is what the judges of the Booker prize were thinking! Maybe the competition that year was even more terrible.
Rating:
Summary: Insipid Love
Review: The plot is unconvincing and lacking in depth. The heroine, Edith Hope, takes a break in a respectable lakeside Swiss hotel, escaping for a while from the immediate consequences of a social indiscretion which she recently committed at home in England. The story concerns her relationships with people who are only acquaintances: her fellow guests in the Hotel du Lac and at home her neighbour and her housekeeper. In often flowery vocabulary, we are introduced to these acquaintances and their foibles: people who have unhealthy relationships with their mothers, daughters, dogs, food and money. The heroine's relationships with these acquaintances amount to little more than disparate and somewhat trivial ancedotes, which are unsatisfactory in the sense that they are peripheral or even irrelevant to the main theme, the true love of the heroine. Her character is languid. It is hard to believe that anyone (even the heroine, who is a writer of romantic fiction) could have mere acquaintances talk them into marriage with a man acknowledged from the outset to be a mother centered bore, while subsequently considering marrying another where both acknowledge from the outset that they do not love each other. Lost in these unlikely banalities is the potential story of her love for the man of whom she is mistress. Ironically, the indiscretion, for which the heroine is banished to the Hotel du Lac, is perhaps her only principled and courageous act.
Rating:
Summary: This is possibly,no surely, the worst Booker prize winner!
Review: The weak writing in its turgid overwrought sentences ( the second sentence of the novel is almost a page in lenghth and worth less than a word) of this novel are suited to the similar plotting. This book is a waste of your time but not only that it also has the ability to create great feelings of resentment towards the author. Never have I felt so insulted by the tone, rhythm and style of a writer. The characterisations are not only thin but immature. The main character is insipid and yet this weakness is not explored in any depth but used as a shield against true insight. I began hoping against hope that this novel was a satire on the constructs of romance, as the main character is a romance novelist, but this hope dwindled with every page...this novel is on the level of Mills and Boon except they are more honest and less prone to overwriting. Deserved zero stars except I hesitate to say this work "deserves" anything. Do not read unless you are willing to have your faith in the literary community severely shaken.
Rating: 
Summary: Nothin' happenin' at the Hotel du Lac
Review: This is yet another excercise in semi-autobiographical snoring by an otherwise capable writer.Why do they DO this? Yeah, yeah, the writer's life is a lonely one, full of self-doubt, sackcloth and ashes. Our hero, Edith, is in a self-imposed exile at some stuffy old hotel, doing penance for an errant love affair. She takes long walks, broods, takes more long walks, broods some more. Meanwhile, the only diversion for the hapless reader is a collection of societal parasites killing time at the same hotel. Give this one a wide berth.
Rating: 
Summary: Reasons for being single
Review: Very subtle and understanding analysis of how a woman who likes her own company could choose singleness...Deep and entertaining reading!
Rating:
Summary: Intelligent Prose
Review: What a pleasure to read intelligent, descriptive prose with a purpose! Not that I am a prude in any sense of the word, but it is such a relief to read modern fiction that is not filled with harsh language or violence. Anita Brookner's writing is so beautifullly structured: her precise descriptions allow the reader to get lost in the setting and emotions like few modern (dare I say it?) American authors; her vocabulary is precise and challenging. This is a book that should be on any serious readers list!
Rating:
Summary: A Woman's Illusions Revealed...
Review: Within the exquisitely refined prose of Hotel du Lac, British novelist Anita Brookner illuminates the quest of the human soul through the journey of one apparently meek, middle-aged writer of romance. Encouraged to take some time away in order to come to her senses after committing a rather glaring social faux pas (which just so happens to be a manifestation of genuine truth), Edith Hope sees little to be gained from her exile. Yet, whether enveloped within the solitude of her dreary room or lingering within the company of the hotel's curiously assembled guests, this unassuming heroine finds herself gleaning perspective into the nuances of romantic entanglements while, at the same time, acquiring heart-wrenching insight into the ways of the world. The subtlety with which Brookner so gracefully propels the tale, without question, serves to intensify the profundity and depth of the work upon its conclusion. Indeed, a moment arrives in which the reader holds within her hands not merely an engaging work of contemporary fiction, but a mirror within which she may discover her own illusions revealed.
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