Leaving home a novel
(Large Print)

Fearful of emulating her isolated and timid widowed mother, Emma Roberts, herself circumspect, repressed, and brooding, leaves London for Paris to pursue her study of classical garden design. Emma is trying to live "according to the classical ideal, that of order and control and self-mastery," the very life that Brookner has so assiduously examined in each of her subtly powerful psychological novels, which now number 23. Brookner's melancholy but determined narrators approach the business of life like cautious chess players excessively contemplating every move, and Emma is no exception.