Anita Brookner: The Next Big Thing

By JANE WESTAWAY

The funniest thing about Anita Brookner's 21st novel is the claim on the flyleaf that this is her funniest to date. Her protagonists tend to be those whom life has overlooked: the less-than-beautiful, clever and successful; the dutiful, unselfish and timid; those who are resigned to loneliness and invisibility but possibly for one last, doomed emotional outing.

The only surprise here is that this time Brookner inflicts her particular brand of misery on a man. Funny? A despairing groan is about as close as you're likely to get to a laugh.

German-born Herz is 73, and lives alone in a central London flat, almost entirely preoccupied with his past, and only superficially concerned with a present comprised of staid walks, minor errands and the odd constrained dinner date. As for the future, death seems the most likely and welcome prospect.

Herz re-experiences his past not merely as exile from his native land, but also from himself; and, as a less than bold lover, from the love of his life, his cousin Fanny.

He is beginning to suffer heart failure, although it is clear his heart failed decades ago.

It is also painfully clear that Herz is suffering a serious clinical depression. We confidently expect Brookner to confront him with circumstances that will jolt him out of his rut. But this confidence is misplaced.

Brookner states, analyses and restates. She dins into us from every possible angle Herz' dreary condition. .

The novel opens with a less than riveting account of a dream of Fanny. It is another 10 pages before Herz goes out to buy The Times.

On page 24 he calls his ex-wife Josie, but it is page 37 before they meet. In chapter six he unenthusiastically contemplates a holiday, meets his solicitor for dinner then takes a peculiar turn. On page 76 he goes to the doctor.

All this action is mediated by Brookner's distanced, erudite style and sparingly interspersed with Herz's memories; none of it offers the longed-for jolt.

It finally arrives, well past the 100-page mark, in the form of lissome new downstairs neighbour, Sophie Clay. Herz is captivated; he seems on the brink of changing his life. When he doesn't, after a period of tormented desire that Brookner continues to treat in her cerebral prose, one begins to suspect it is Herz' creator who might be suffering from depression.

Herz is stoic, and for a while seems courageous; but this isn't courage, merely a refined form of despair - that beloved British quality that even runs through their TV sitcoms.

It is as if Brookner finds passivity heroic, yet Herz is no hero, only a misguided martyr. One longs to shove into his hands a pile of self-help books and the number of a good therapist.

The Next Big Thing is less a novel than an obsessive character study and, as is so often the case, there is nothing as dull as somebody else's obsession. Unless, of course, you're a Booker judge - the novel is included on the recently announced long list.

Viking

$54.95