Getting by on Style

... I decided that I could only get by on style ...

Look at Me, Ch. 10

He would go to Paris, if only to prove himself as good as his word. It was all a question of style.

Strangers, Ch. 26

I cannot emphasise enough the complex pleasures of Strangers. I wonder what a reader new to Brookner would make of it. On almost every page there are echoes of earlier novels. As for the plot, what there is of it is stretched so thinly that Brookner must rely at times only on her formidable style. This is, of course, what we really want.