Private View, A

by Anita Brookner

Modest, reliable, decorous George Bland faces retirement, surprised to find himself suddenly alone and uncertain. His solitude is brusquely overturned when the mercurial and invasive Katy Gibb appears. By turn sulky girl and sultry woman, Katy embodies an attitude of entitlement quite foreign to Bland, yet she also appears to offer a last chance for adventure, for abandoning the weight of a lifetime of discretion and responsibility. In the contest of wills that follows, Bland discovers his true nature, his capacity for compromise and self-deception. The result is a novel rich in understanding of human complexity and of the desire to take charge of one's own destiny.