Strangers, By Anita Brookner

If every day feels like Sunday in Brooknerland, then be prepared for the author's latest novel which opens at the close of a February weekend. Retired banker Paul Sturgis has always felt homesick for another life, even as a child.

Now aged 73, and living alone in a neat South Kensington flat, he dreams of coming home. Within the space of a couple of months, two women arrive on the scene: Vicky, a pretty fifty-year-old divorcée, whom he quickly decides he doesn't actually like, and Sarah, the love of his life who walked out on him years earlier for being "too nice." To which brand of humiliation will Sturgis surrender himself? Brookner at her forensic best.