Leaving Home
by Anita Brookner
Penguin, $116
The protagonist in Leaving Home is a woman going places who is moved by gardens - but, being an Anita Brookner character, she's rather less inclined to look forward to sunnier climes. Emma Roberts is a 26-year-old student writing a thesis on 17th-century European gardens. It's no surprise that their 'reticence, sobriety and order' attracts her - the same adjectives could be used to describe her character. Yearning for colour, however, she takes up a scholarship to study in Paris, where she meets a woman similar in background but opposite in disposition. Emma may want to change her life, but there's an umbilical cord connecting her to her widowed mother, who has raised her to scream into a cup. 'For readers who are already fans,' The Christian Science Monitor said, 'the author's elegant prose and psychological acuity are fully on display and will not disappoint.' The Independent agreed, applauding Brookner for intelligently asking the following: 'How do you shape your experiences into some sort of coherent existence when it feels as though you have not a single resource in your heart to guide you?'
