Family and Friends was published by Jonathan Cape in 1985, the year after Hotel du Lac won the Booker. The novel represents a departure from Brookner’s usual single-protagonist structure: it follows an entire family — the Dorns, central European Jewish émigrés who have settled in London — across several decades, using formal photographs (weddings, bar mitzvahs, family gatherings) as the structural device that organizes the narrative.
Sofka Dorn is the family’s matriarch: beautiful, formidable, and governed by standards of behavior that her children will either fulfill or betray. Her four children divide along the axis that defines all of Brookner’s fiction: the dutiful and the vital. Frederick and Betty are the conformists — they stay close to Sofka, fulfill their familial obligations, and live constrained, unhappy lives. Alfred and Mimi are the rebels — they escape to Hollywood and to the continent respectively, pursuing pleasure and self-interest, and are rewarded with freedom.
Brookner’s moral analysis is characteristically uncomfortable: the novel refuses to endorse either path. The dutiful children suffer, but their suffering has dignity. The selfish children flourish, but their flourishing is shallow. The photographs that structure the narrative capture moments of posed happiness that conceal the unhappiness they frame — and the gap between the photograph and the reality it records is the gap between the family’s public narrative and its private truth.
Collecting Family and Friends
First edition (Jonathan Cape, London, 1985): Cloth with dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $30–$75
- Very good: $10–$30