Brookner’s voice, muted but unyielding, speaks here to a solitude willingly assumed, a rehearsal for an old age accepted without resistance. There is something chilling in the way she links routine with the erosion of time, not as tragedy but as inevitability. The passage is drawn from the early pages of Altered States, and lingers long after it is read.
I now feel that this interval, which I describe to others as a holiday, is peculiarly suited to one of my temperament, which is stolid, and my history, which is not. I accept the solitude, the routines, as old people do, and although not old—fifty-five is not old these days—I begin to anticipate a time when small landmarks, such as my mid-morning coffee at the Grand Café de la Place, and my walk to the station to pick up the English papers, will be appreciated. My old age will come as no surprise to me, and something tells me that I might spend it here, in this little town of Vif—a misnomer, for no place could be more somnolent—on the Franco-Swiss border.
—Anita Brookner, Altered States, p. 8