In Falling Slowly , Anita Brookner brilliantly evokes the origins, nature, and consequences of human isolation. As middle age settles upon the Sharpe sisters, regret over chances not taken casts a shadow over their contented existence. Beatrice, a talented if uninspired pianist, gives up performing, a decision motivated by stiffening joints and the sudden realization that her art has never brought her someone to love. Miriam, usually calm and lucid, slides headlong into an affair with a charming, handsome--and very married--man. And as each woman awakens to the urgency of her loneliness, illness threatens to sever them both from the one happiness they have grown to count on: each other. Painfully wise, the Sharpe sisters embody the conflicting yearnings Jane Austen delineated in Sense and Sensibility . "Brookner is a writer of great skill and precision." -- Los Angeles Times Book Review "If Henry James were around, the only writer he'd be reading with complete approval would be Anita Brookner." -- The New York Times Book Review "Few contemporary novelists can match Ms. Brookner's consistently high level of achievement." -- The Wall Street Journal "Anita Brookner works a spell on the reader; being under it is both an education and a delight." -- The Washington Post Book World In Falling Slowly , Anita Brookner brilliantly evokes the origins, nature, and consequences of human isolation. As middle age settles upon the Sharpe sisters, regret over chances not taken casts a shadow over their contented existence. Beatrice, a talented if uninspired pianist, gives up performing, a decision motivated by stiffening joints and the sudden realization that her art has never brought her someone to love. Miriam, usually calm and lucid, slides headlong into an affair with a charming, handsome--and very married--man. And as each woman awakens to the urgency of her loneliness, illness threatens to sever them both from the one happiness they have grown to count on: each other. Painfully wise, the Sharpe sisters embody the conflicting yearnings Jane Austen delineated in Sense and Sensibility . In Falling Slowly, Anita Brookner brilliantly evokes the origins, nature, and consequences of human isolation. As middle age settles upon the Sharpe sisters, regret over chances not taken casts a shadow over their contented existence. Beatrice, a talented if uninspired pianist, gives up performing, a decision motivated by stiffening joints and the sudden realization that her art has never brought her someone to love. Miriam, usually calm and lucid, slides headlong into an affair with a charming, handsome--and very married--man. And as each woman awakens to the urgency of her loneliness, illness threatens to sever them both from the one happiness they have grown to count on: each other. Painfully wise, the Sharpe sisters embody the conflicting yearnings Jane Austen delineated in Sense and Sensibility. Anita 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. On her way to the London Library, Mrs Eldon, who still thought of herself as Miriam Sharpe, paused as usual to examine the pictures in the windows of the Duke Street galleries. She hoped one day to find the image she unconsciously sought, without knowing why she sought it, something to lift the spirits, to transport her on an imaginary journey, to give a hint of the transcendence which was so blatantly lacking in her everyday life of words and paper. Today there was a Dutch flower piece, badly darkened by age and varnish, and a portrait of an Elizabethan boy, snug in his ruff, his lashless eyes denoting a childhood of unchildish amusements--nothing, in short, to appeal to the vague restlessness she always felt before settling down to another silent day's work. But farther down the street, in a gallery specializing in images of the nineteenth century destined for easy consumption--girls in frills on swings, neat northern townscapes--she found something to her taste, a smoky winter scene by an artist of whom she had never heard, Eugène Laloue. It was clearly signed at the lower left, and on the frame a small brass plate proclaimed: 'Place du Châtelet under Snow'. She looked closer, drawn in by the dirty yellow sky, smoky where it met the roofs of the buildings, under which she could imagine herself trudging home after a cold day. That yellow sky supplied its own illumination, although there were lights on in the buildings to the left, and even in a shop, too small to be of much consequence but surprising in this vaguely affluent setting. On the ground snow had been puddled into water by passing feet; it dusted the tops of the street lamps and the bench on which no one would sit. Groups of people stood waiting for the horse-drawn omnibus which could be seen approaching in the distance. In the centre of the picture a mother in a long black coat and