The Rules of Engagement - Paperback

by Anita Brookner (Author)

The Booker Prize-winning author of "Hotel du Lac" and "Making Things Better" gives readers an exquisite story about the changes in relationships over time, and how choices can both reflect the past and direct the future.

Front Jacket

Elizabeth and Betsy had been school friends in 1950s London. Elizabeth, prudent and introspective, values social propriety. Betsy, raised by a spinster aunt, is open, trusting, and desperate for affection. After growing up and going their separate ways, the two women reconnect later in life. Elizabeth has married kind but tedious Digby, while Betsy is still searching for love and belonging. In this deeply perceptive story, Anita Brookner brilliantly charts the resilience of a friendship tested by alienation and by jealousy over a man who seems to offer the promise of escape.

Author Biography

Anita Brookner was born in London and, apart from several years spent in Paris, has lived there ever since. She trained as an art historian and taught at the Courtauld Institute of Art until 1988. The Rules of Engagement is her twenty-second novel.