Incidents in the Rue Laugier

Nov 30, 2025 6:39 PM

Author:Anita Brookner

'I have reached the age when a woman begins to perceive that she is growing into the person whom she least plans to resemble: her mother.'

Nadine has always wanted her daughter Maud to be married and off her hands. When the two women are staying at Nadine's sister's house near Meaux, they become part of a sophisticated, wordly group into which neither Maud nor Edward Harrison, a young visitor from England, seem to fit.

Maud is swept off her feet by David Tyler, a stylish, irresponsible young man who robs her of her innocence and disappears. Edward, forced into adulthood by his inheritance of a bookshop, and thus a career, takes Maud into his care. But for both of them the shadow of Tyler is always there, illuminating their feelings of inadequacy, disappointment and loss.

Reviews

She is funny, vivid and devastating in her observations.

—— Helen Dunmore, Observer

Anita Brookner has sublimely mastered the art of making her reader interested in her characters . . . a thoroughly enjoyable and most unusual novel.

—— Spectator

An enchanting, honest novel.

—— Time Out

A writer at the peak of his powers; it reminds you what good reading is all about

—— Chicago Sun Times

Reading Turgenev is one of the most beautiful and memorable things he has written. It stays in your memory -like Turgenev

—— Independent on Sunday

He writes like an angel, but is determined to wring your heart. Trevor at his most evocative and haunting

—— Daily Mail

The essential novel for any Star Wars fan

—— Inverse

The greatest of all novels. Read it again, to test and savour the infallible truth of Tolstoy’s understanding of every stage and aspect of human life

—— Alan Hollinghurst , New York Times

To read him . . . is to find one's way home . . . to everything within us that is fundamental and sane

—— Thomas Mann

In War And Peace, richly observed human life - its catastrophes and passions, its thrills and tedium - mark out Tolstoy as a fox, who knows all about the dizzying diversity of existence

—— Observer

Highly and deservedly praised...is a remarkable achievement.

—— Contemporary Review

Wonderfully readable

—— Wendy Cope , The Week

Translators give their wits and craft selflessly in service of others' work; this is a triumph of fidelity and unpretentiousness.

—— The Independent

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