A 2004 Vacation Reading (selected by The New York Times)
“Brookner's 22nd novel arrives, regular as clockwork and twice as delicate. Steeped in the moral codes of just yesteryear, two Englishwomen (one called Elizabeth, the other Betsy), childhood friends born in 1948, putter in their rooms and in their lives until, surprisingly, each of them has an affair with the same married man. It does not turn out well.”