With this novel, Booker Prize-winning author Anita Brookner confirms her reputation as an unparalleled observer of social nuance and deeply felt longings. Brief Lives chronicles an unlikely friendship: that between the flamboyant, monstrously egocentric Julia and the modest, self-effacing Fay, who is at once fascinated and appalled by Julia's excesses. Thrust together by their husbands' business partnership -- and by a guilty secret -- Julia and Fay develop an intense bond that is nonetheless something less than intimacy, a relationship in which we see our own uneasy compromises, not only with other people, but with life itself.
- ISBN10 158547018X
- ISBN13 9781585470181
- Publish Date 1 March 2001 (first published 30 August 1990)
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 19 December 2011
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Center Point Publishing
- Edition Large type / large print edition
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 309
- Language English