Ever read a book you've only sort of heard of but didn't know much about until the author died? You read it and you feel guilty, or sheepish somehow. It isn't that it would have made a difference to the author if you'd read it while they were alive and well—the fact that you heard about them after their death means they had some success—but you creepy about it nonetheless.
Anita Brookner died March 10, 2016, at age 87. Her Hotel du Lac won the Booker Prize in 1984 and remained her most notable book. It's just 184 pages long, but dense with ideas and terrific writing. When you finish it you feel like you've read a much longer book. She had that way of describing things that makes you go, "Exactly!" and you wonder why you've never read something like it before. Read it slowly.
The plot's a simple one. Edith, a British romantic novelist who at 39 is on the cusp of what in the early 80s was considered middle age, spends a few weeks in a Swiss hotel where she's been directed to stay after doing something bad, which you find out over halfway through the novel and don't worry, it's not an atrocious crime or anything. The hotel is a summer place and the season is over, fall taking hold and even hints of winter.
This is not an upbeat story. You don't read it because you want to read something "life affirming" or "hear warming." You read it because you want to read something good.