Hotel du Lac

Hotel du Lac is a novel by the English writer Anita Brookner, published in 1984. It won the Booker Prize that year and was adapted for television in 1986.

Edith Hope writes romance novels and holds modest expectations of her own life. After a secret and often lonely affair with a married man, and a marriage that did not happen, her friends have banished her to a hotel on the shore of Lake Geneva for what they call a period of probation, in which she is to grow up and to atone for her mistakes.

Edith arrives determined not to change and keeps to herself. The hotel is quiet and the other guests are English: Mrs Pusey and her daughter Jennifer, who are devoted to each other and live comfortably without noticing much; and Mr Neville, a middle-aged man whose attention gives Edith something to consider. The novel unfolds through her observation of them and through the questions they force her to ask about who she is and what she has done with her life.