Falling Slowly Audiobook By Anita Brookner cover art

Falling Slowly

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Falling Slowly

By: Anita Brookner
Narrated by: Eleanor Bron
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Beatrice considers herself to be delicate and sensitive, idle and confused. Forced into early retirement, she has an unashamed and romantic desire to be rescued by the ideal man. But Beatrice's only family is her orderly sister, Miriam.©1999 Anita Brookner (P)2014 Audible, Inc. Contemporary Fiction Fiction Genre Fiction
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Two sisters in middle age each making poor choices missing out on life. I kept wanting to shout” Go for it” Of course with Brookner they don’t Brookner at her very best getting into the hearts and minds of women of a certain age. Eleanor Bron is a narrator who is perfect for this author.

Magnificent writing perfectly read.

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This beautifully read book gives perfect weight to Anita Brookner’s exquisite prose. Here, the observable world, the world of custom and appearance, and most of all, the complex world of the psyche and its persuasive distortions are offered with Brookner’s typical restraint, precision and eloquence. Also typical to her work are educated, isolated white Londoners constrained to solitude by fears they rarely recognize as such as they while away their lives in intelligent pursuits, contemplative walks and oh so careful conversations. Adding to the isolation here, and fears, too, are the indignities of advanced age or illness as well as loss. Brookner confronts these realities through characters whose lifelong insecurities and needy egos in turn allow the author to express a wry humor that, along with her stoic steadiness, leavens what would otherwise be a dire story. The novel’s final treatment of what it describes (paraphrased) as a “companionable loneliness” is the happy ending many readers could use.

A Companionable Loneliness

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I love her use of the English language with uncommon words. Perfect, beautiful and memorable.

The narrator

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It is a book about two sisters and their life choices.
The reader, Eleanor Bron, is outstanding - albeit humorless. But so (humorless) are the characters in the story. For the longest time, I had a very hard time distinguishing one sister from the other (something that wouldn't have happened, I suppose, if reading the book on one's own). What is totally unclear is what motivates these women's choices. There are lengthy, decadent descriptions throughout, but, despite the third-person narration, no real view of the protagonists' inner character: only their thoughts, but not where these thoughts come from (from where do they originate in the psyche of the person?).
The story is painted in such a way that the reader has the impression of it being set in the 1920s or earlier... until, out of the blue, cell phones are mentioned. It completely threw me off. At that point, certain choices of the main characters and their manners (or mannerisms) truly didn't make sense anymore.
I don't regret listening to this Audible, but I don't think it is a book worthy of praise or worth remembering.

AMAZING READER; FAULTY PLOT

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Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

I am a big fan of Anita Brookner and have read all of her books. This is one of my
favorite. She writes of the lonely, constrained lives of two sisters, both of whom have
ill-fated romances. No one describes loneliness better than Anita Brookner.
The narrator is excellent. This book is not for every taste, but it is an
involving and well told story.

One of her best stories

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Brookner's artistry is mysterious. In book after book, she writes about women (and sometimes men) who live largely lonely, unfulfilled lives. The books are not especially eventful (walks through parks, an aborted excursion to Paris, a dinner date that leads to little) but somehow she makes them tense and filled with psychological and emotional urgency. She usually doesn't describe place, and there's a lot of summary. Her books tend to be quite short. And yet, every novel is rich, vivid, accurate, and intense. Her perceptions and insights about the nuances of behavior rival those of Henry James--referenced repeatedly in this book. This is a true artist who found her voice, subject matter, and milieu and stuck with it. If you're looking for easy feel-good story arcs or big plotty novels, run screaming. Personally, I can't get enough of these novels. I don't care that they tend to blur together in my mind. What she does is so specific and elegant, occasionally funny, continually witty, the sentences themselves are so flawlessly composed without seeming forced, the work cannot be confused with anyone else.

They are splendid to listen to (although there are passages and epigrammatic lines you want to underline) and Eleanor Bron is ideal as a reader.

This isn't one of my favorites, but who cares? It's still more effortlessly intelligent and beautiful, more deeply satisfying than 90% of what's out there.

A True Artist

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I bought this title some time ago, giving up after a while, figuring that I might return to it again at some point. Well ... doing so didn't help much as I've decided to bail on it partway through once again, for good. Just couldn't maintain interest in the limited, dull lives of these unlikeable people. Eleanor Bron's narration fits the story well.

Could not finish

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