Making Things Better - Hardcover

The Booker Prize?winning author of The Bay of Angels and Hotel du Lac, ?one of the finest novelists of her generation? (The New York Times), now gives us a masterly new novel about the self-discoveries that come with maturity, and the eternal question confronted by people of all ages: What will I do with the rest of my life?

In this richly written, emotionally revealing novel, Brookner once again ?works a spell on the reader? (The Washington Post Book World), as a man finds himself contemplating the difficult life questions: How is it all going to work out? What shall I do before the end? As Herz ponders proposing marriage to an old friend, making a trip to Paris to see a favorite painting, selling his home, moving, starting afresh, he knows that he must do something with his remaining years. But what?

Brilliant, funny, profound, Making Things Better captures the quandaries of aging: the misunderstanding of an increasingly modern, alien world; awkward conversations with passersby; even more awkward encounters with longtime friends and acquaintances; the anxieties posed by age and uncertainty?and the bizarre, magnificent self-knowledge that perhaps only age, reflection, and experience can bring.

“One of the very few contemporary authors whose novels deserve to live on well into the next century.”
—The Washington Post Book World

“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 penetration of her vision, the sense of conviction in what she is doing, and the unforced elegance of her writing.”
—The Wall Street Journal

“Brookner is a writer of great skill and precision. Passages of brilliant writing abound, hard-won insights that startle us with Brookner’s clarity and succinct intelligence.”
—Los Angeles Times Book Review

“A superb storyteller in her prime.”
—The Globe and Mail

“Under...Brookner’s transforming eye, the most ordinary lives become engrossing adventures.”
—San Francisco Chronicle

“Brookner’s control over the material is absolute.”
—Jane Smiley