{"product_id":"leaving-home-isbn-9781400095650","title":"Leaving Home","description":"\u003cp\u003eAt twenty-six, Emma Roberts comes to the painful realization that if she is ever  to become truly independent, she must leave her comfortable London flat and venture  into the wider world. This entails not only breaking free from a claustrophobic relationship  with her mother, but also shedding her inherited tendency toward melancholy. Once  settled in a small Paris hotel, Emma befriends Françoise Desnoyers, a vibrant young  woman who offers Emma a glimpse into a turbulent life so different from her own.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn this exquisite new novel of self-discovery, Booker Prize-winner Anita Brookner  addresses one of the great dramas of our lives: growing up and leaving home.\u003c\/p\u003e\"A small gem of clarity and intensity. Her latest, \u003ci\u003eLeaving Home\u003c\/i\u003e, promises--and delivers--the savory experience devotees of Brookner have come to crave.\" —\u003ci\u003eThe Baltimore Sun\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Yet another delicious reading experience. Her elegant prose and psychological acuity are fully on display. . . . As a narrator Emma is both clear-eyed and honest--often achingly so.\"—\u003ci\u003eThe Christian Science Monitor\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Beautiful, piercingly elegant.\" —\u003ci\u003eNew York Times Book Review\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“It’s hard to pinpoint how Brookner’s world differs from the one we know, since the minute we begin reading her fiction, we lose our awareness of the boundaries that separate us from the people whose often circumscribed lives she is so deftly describing. . . . Admirable and refreshing.” —\u003ci\u003eBookforum\u003c\/i\u003eAnita Brookner was born in London and, apart from several years in Paris, has lived there ever since. She trained as an art historian and taught at the Courtauld Institute of Art until 1988. Leaving Home is her twenty-third novel.1  suddenly, from the depths of an otherwise peaceful night, a name erupted  from the past: Dolly Edwards, my mother’s friend, a smiling woman with  very red lips and a fur coat. I remember the coat because it was not  removed for the whole of her visit, which she no doubt intended to be  fleeting, having, she implied, much to do. There was another friend from  my mother’s prehistory, before I existed, but this presence was less  distinct, perhaps not seen at such close quarters. Betty? Betty Pollock?  The Pollock seemed shifting, uncertain, an approximation. Maybe that had  been her name before she married, for in my mother’s day everyone got  married. Women wore their husbands much as they wore their pearl  necklaces, or indeed their fur coats. The shame that attached to unmarried  women was indelible, and my mother seemed to bear something of that  imprint although she was a respectable widow. Dolly Edwards, with her  flourishing presence, obviously felt sorry for my mother in her lonely  state, with only an eight-year-old child for company. Fortunately my  mother did not perceive this, although I did. My mother was impressed by  this visit, grateful, even happy. And Dolly Edwards played her part  valiantly, reminiscing, producing names unknown to me and rejected by me  as having no relevance to my own life. I may even have been jealous of  this woman who had known my mother before her anomalous condition was  confirmed by the death of my father. Truth to tell she did not much miss  him: solitude seemed so much her natural state that Dolly Edwards was not  mistaken in making of this a flying visit. My mother marvelled for days  over this, with no resentment. It was less a visit than a visitation. It  was never repeated.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The other friend, the one I thought of as Betty Pollock, though that might  not have been her name, was less opulent, but kinder. This friend we  actually journeyed to see, an event so rare that I remembered it. This  visit occasioned no wistful comments from my mother, probably because  Betty Pollock was not someone of whom she had learned to be slightly  afraid. She was even rather unattractive, though clearly was not concerned  by this, and in any event her large plain features were transformed by her  dazzling smile. The other thing I noted about her was that she was happy.  This was mysteriously apparent. I experienced it with relief, though I did  not understand it. Now of course I can identify it as a state of steady  satisfaction combined with an absence of longing. This must have been less  the gift of her husband than of Betty Pollock herself, her smile  signalling her contentment with her lot to all within her radius. She too  had very red lips, though her hair was grey. She too was eager to  reminisce, having nothing to hide. Yet   my mother seemed inhibited in her presence, perhaps because of the  contrast between them. I think that Betty Pollock vanished from the scene  shortly after this visit: her husband was anxious to leave London and move  back to Swanage, where   he had grown up. I think my mother missed her, though not   as much as she missed Dolly Edwards, who remained out of touch.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    They had once been part of the same set, though this was a modest suburban  affair, formed largely by parents who knew each other as neighbours or  friends, and vigilant elder brothers who did duty as escorts when no other  was available. I see Dolly as the bold one, Betty as the poor one, and my  mother as the beauty, but whose beauty was undermined by an innocence that  never left her. She longed for an ideal life which would not betray her,  became married because her own mother wished it, and survived widowhood  almost as a return to her natural state. I never knew a woman so inactive,  her days reserved for reading and thinking. I soon learned not to disturb  either process. Yet I think she was lonely, a perception that filled me  with distress. We loved each other greatly, yet so exclusive was that love  that it was experienced more like anguish. That feeling has remained with  me and will no doubt survive all the rest.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    It was therefore somehow appropriate that she should die and leave me  bereft, and also appropriate, though unforeseen, that I should attach  myself to a surrogate—though not a surrogate mother—whom I saw as capable  of acting as a mentor. This was not a subject on which I was anxious to  dwell, although it had no doubt accounted for my current wakefulness. That  this wakefulness had produced only the completely irrele-  vant name of Dolly Edwards was one of those connections that the  unconscious chose to make ahead of and perhaps more comprehensively than  anything achieved by deliberate attention. Dolly Edwards was an associate,  however negligent, of my mother. My mother was somehow not viable. It had  become necessary for me to look for safety elsewhere, owing to my mother’s  frailty, her reclusive habits, and her early demise. At all times I had  been fearful of leaving home in case something should happen to her. Yet  leaving home had become a necessity, although a painful one, if ever I  were to find freedom. The unconscious had a complete network installed: I  had only to be patient and all would be revealed. I tried to work out the  significance of what my abrupt awakening had tried to tell me. When the  information came through it was not surprising: I had to undertake a  journey. I had to leave home. If I had switched on the light I would have  seen my travel bag, half filled, resting against my bedroom chair. What  was marvel-  lous about this was not the way in which the information   had reached me but the fact that the entire process—waking,   remembering, and finally coming to full consciousness—had taken no more  than a few minutes, or even seconds. My impression of an endless night was  erroneous, proof once again of the dark hinterland that produces our more  useful understanding.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The circuitry was admirable. My eight-year-old self had seen that my  mother had somehow been let down by her old friends. In Dolly Edwards’s  case this was easily explained: she was confident and affluent (the fur  coat) and my mother was neither. Betty Pollock was a happy and satisfied  woman, as even I had perceived: again, my mother was neither. In the days  that succeeded these two encounters, disappointment had turned to sadness  at her own inability to advance, and in the shadow of that sadness, only  contained, only bearable if left undisturbed, I felt doomed to follow if I  were not to make some sort of independent outbreak of my own, and on my  own behalf. My best chance would lie in finding another source of  authority, another agent of influence. I did not know whether this could  be allowed, let alone arranged. It would be a journey away from home,  symbolic no doubt but nonetheless real for all that. In any event it would  have to be managed, and managed, if possible, without disloyalty, more or  less invisibly, above all in good faith. I remain convinced that this is a  critical task but not one which brings with it a resounding sense of  victory.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    In my own life very little has changed. I am older now, of course. I live  alone, in a small flat, with the instinctive frugality of those who live  alone, financially secure though never extravagant. I sit and write the  book on which I have been working for some years now and which is almost  finished, much to my publisher’s surprise. In fact, despite the many  delays, this tactic has served me rather well. The book is always  immanent, but not in a position to be judged. The larval nature of the  book pleases both one’s friends and one’s rivals. When questioned about  its progress one responds with a certain smile, a smile that implies  secret activity, and replies, quite truthfully, that one seems to have  collected a great deal of material, so much so that the book may turn out  to be more substantial than anticipated. I have seen this technique used  to great effect by the worldly, so that the very absence of the book is  more potent than its presence could ever be. In my case I can only plead  an anxious sincerity: there is a great deal of material, and sometimes it  seems that there will always be a reason for me to undertake one more  journey, to revisit familiar sites and walk once again in deserted  gardens, the only visitor on grey autumn mornings, until I realize that my  work is truly finished. And that may be a very sad day.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    My departures are all the same now, accomplished without difficulty but  with a certain philosophical fatigue. Once I would have gone anywhere,  strenuously; now I tend to go to the same places, which I know well, too  well perhaps. I also see a few friends who have survived our now separate  lives. Once we were familiars; now we are merely figures in the same  landscape, and what had once been eagerness has become obligation. There  is no blame attaching to this; the trajectory had been designed by the  unconscious, a long time ago. But the unconscious does not rule the world,  does not even illuminate it, apart from these brief fragments of  understanding. It is, after all, only part of the self. The other part,  the most important, is subject to the will. But it is also subject to the  will of others.","brand":"Vintage","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46304915521765,"sku":"NP9781400095650","price":19.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781400095650.jpg?v=1767731252","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/leaving-home-isbn-9781400095650","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}