The Bay of Angels

By Anita Brookner

Book Overview

Despite growing up with a widowed and reclusive mother, young Zoë Cunningham retains an unshakable faith in storybook happy endings. When her mother, Anne, finally decides to remarry, Zoë is thrilled with her prospective stepfather, Simon Gould, who is not only wealthy, but also kind and generous. Simon's affection for his new family allows Zoë to pursue what she thinks is an independent life: her own apartment in a fashionable part of London, a university education, casual affairs, and carefree holidays at Simon's villa in Nice. When a series of unexpected calamities intervene, Zoë learns that the idyllic freedom she enjoys has come at a steep price. To preserve both her mother's and her own sense of wellbeing, Zoë must discern the real motives of the strangers on whom she now depends, including the silent and mysterious man whose nocturnal movements have attracted her attention.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0375727604
• ISBN13: 9780375727603
• Release Date: April 2002
• Publisher: Vintage
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

a place of safety

Anita Brookner has written not so much a coming of age story as a coming to terms story. Zoe Cunningham narrates her own life story, beginning with her childhood as the daughter of a reclusive but kind widow who takes good care of her but teaches her nothing about coping with any of life's vicissitudes. Three or four decades ago, stream of consciousness fiction was popular, and there are elements of that somewhat formless style here, as Zoe works her way through her fears of losing her freedom, being rejected, choosing a career path, being a "liberated" woman or a genteel but passive lady like her mother, being engulfed by the needs of her mother..... These are common fears that we all have to tackle. It is interesting to see how Zoe ultimately manages to find and make something of herself, help the man she loves do the same, and develop a genuine capacity for understanding and compassion.

if you are a courages woman it is for you

I don't think we can find more sensitive and more accurate writer than Anita Brookner in describing and touching the "alive meat" of the loneliness of a woman - without self pity and no melodramatic epizodes - just the simple and the very true facts.I have read more than 10 books by Anita Brookner, and each one of them was and still a great experience and an enrichment for the soul and the mind!.

"...ANGELS" DAZZLES!

ANITA BROOKNER's "BAY OF ANGELS" returns the beloved Booker Prize winning author to the top of her form after a slightly-less-excellent trio of lessor novels. Brookner's specialty is her insight into the lives of non-glamorous people, and how well she gets inside their head and lets the thoughts spill out in page-after-page of wonderous prose. A suspense-of-a-different-kind leads a young woman through the complexities of dealing with her mother's second marriage and move to the south of France, her stepfather's sudden death, and the effect this has on her mother... as well as the young woman's career, romantic life, and everyday living. Choose this book and forget about serial killers, shallow romance, secret agents, and all the other drivel which clutters the best seller lists. This one is AAAA quality about real people you can get into.

Bittersweet tale

Anita Brookner is a true artist in the creation of fully developed characters that the reader comes to love. This feat was accomplished yet again in this tender novel. It is a tale dripping with loneliness and yet there is also a feeling of redemption in being able to survive the depths of loneliness that will gladden the heart of the emphatic reader.

Angels and drama from the best writer around

This writer has got to be the best wordsmith around. In each novel the sentences stand alone, dynamic, fresh and gleaming in intensity. The story is important, the characters are profound but these are often upstaged by the absolute pleasure of reading such sharp writing. I can't be the only person buying the latest novel of Anita Brookner every year as soon as it hits the shelf.Much has been said about Brookner's lonely women and feminist approach and I will leave that to others who are better informed than me to remark upon. What I look for in every novel is the dramatic turn which never fails to be exciting. In THE BAY OF ANGELS, there are several but the most outstanding is the moment when Zoe returns to reclaim her stepfather's house in Nice and finds it already occupied, cocktails in hand, by his greedy relatives. The attitudes and survival tactics of the women who share the clinique with Zoe's sick mother are searing. Best of all is the moment by the sea when Zoe's reflects on the angels flying up from the bay and inward to land where they will reinforce the already celestial commercialism of earth. A friend of mine in London once remarked to me that he sometimes sees Anita Brookner early in the morning on the Kings Road heading towards Waitrose supermarket. I was astounded, "doesn't anyone stop her," I asked imagining that she would be beset with fans. "No," said my friend, "nobody knows who she is." I would prefer to think that London is so vast that it renders one anonymous and invisible which is often the very dilemma ensnaring her characters.