Providence – Anita Brookner (1983)

 

The second of my Brookner reads for Brookner in July.

Providence is described on Goodreads and elsewhere as a romantic comedy –not sure that I see it in quite those terms, but it is a novel I enjoyed very much. This is an early Brookner novel – in fact it was only Brookner’s second novel. In her first novel –A start in Life, the main character believes her life has been ruined by literature. In this novel, Kitty Maule is similarly affected by her literature. Kitty wishes to be “totally unreasonable, totally unfair, very demanding, and very beautiful.” Instead Kitty is an attractive woman of thirty, she can barely remember her French mother, and spends time worrying about her grandparents, submitting herself to her grandmother’s dressmaking – and plagued by her annoying neighbour Caroline who plays her radio loudly to stave off loneliness. Kitty is a lecturer in literature working with a small difficult group on the classic French novel Adolphe. Kitty’s desire for success in her romantic life even drives her to consult a clairvoyant.

“Her main preoccupation was whether Maurice would ask her to go with him to France. She would be useful, she knew, could do all the boring things, while he got on with driving the car and getting from one place to another and being inspired by what he saw. French after all, was her mother tongue; she could save him a lot of time and trouble. But how to suggest this? The suggestion must surely come from him, and he was still bent over his maps, his hand blindly reaching for the cup of coffee she had poured for him. It seemed as if he could take the cathedrals of France without any human company to dilute them, his passion for the absolute, for God and beauty sustaining him where she herself would have calculated the moment at which she might have crept out to the patisserie.”

For Kitty has been having a somewhat lukewarm romance with fellow academic Maurice. Cool and immaculate Maurice has a sorrow in his past from which he is still suffering. Maurice also has his faith, his absolute belief in divine providence. After two years Maurice is often a disappointment to Kitty; she feeds off his occasional endearments and small kindnesses. Kitty’s romantic pursuit of Maurice takes her to France, a depressing room in a Parisian guest house where she waits for Maurice to break off his tour of French cathedrals to pay her a hurried visit. While Kitty nervously prepares for a lecture, and wonders about Maurice’s commitment, Maurice is considering his own future.

Providence is a quiet, beautifully observed and enjoyable novel, it is the kind of novel where little happens – but I like novels like that, and there is some truly brilliant characterisation. The pervading atmosphere of the novel is one I recognised as typically Brookner – just it is less bleak than some of her later novels – although there are no smiles at the end, we can hardly expect that now. I often find it hard to like Brookner’s central character, but in Kitty Maule I find she has created a character I actually rather did like. It was Maurice I couldn’t take to. Kitty is a fairly typical Brookner heroine (if that’s the right word) she does rather wait for things to happen – she compares herself with the other unmarried women that she knows – and allows herself to remain disappointed in her life and in her relationship and does nothing to further her own happiness. The ending was for me, therefore in no way unexpected. Providence would actually provide an excellent starting point for anyone coming to Anita Brookner’s work for the first time.