Anita Brookner, the celebrated novelist and art historian who "was highly regarded for her style and stories centering on the theme of middle-class loneliness, often featuring female protagonists," died March 10, the Guardian reported. She was 87. Brookner published more than 20 novels, including Hotel du Lac (1984 Booker Prize winner), The Rules of Engagement, Latecomers, Leaving Home, Incidents in the Rue Laugier and Look at Me.
Noting that Brookner was working in the tradition of the French novel, her publisher Juliet Annan said, "She also had the most extraordinary effect on people because she had such a highly developed sense of what was morally right. If you were with her you felt that you had to behave a whole lot better, but she was also very, very funny and very self-deprecating."
In a 2009 review of Brookner's novel Strangers, Hilary Mantel called her "the sort of artist described as minor by people who read her books only once.... The singular quality of each, as well as the integrity of the project, is established. Each book is a prayer bead on a string, and each prayer is a secular, circumspect prayer, a prayer and a protest and a charm against encroaching night."
Describing conversations with his longtime friend Brookner, author Julian Barnes once told the Telegraph: "You will find yourself babbling. One of the most remarkable things about her is that her conversation has perfect punctuation, so that you hear every colon and semi-colon; and this makes you aware that your own grammar in spoken English is very sloppy. It's not a deliberate trick to make you feel uneasy; it's simply how she is."
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Canadian author Diane Silvey, a member of the Sechelt Indian Band (Coast Salish) who wrote numerous children's titles on aboriginal subjects, died March 3, Quillblog reported. In 2005, Kids Can Press released her work The Kids Book of Aboriginal Peoples in Canada, which was illustrated by John Mantha and shortlisted for the 2006 Christie Harris Illustrated Children's Book Prize. Val Wyatt, one of her editors, said, "I admired Diane so much. She overcame many hardships in life to become a teacher and was an advocate for her students and for First Nations people all her life. She also had a wicked sense of humor and we would laugh our way through lunches together, the last one being only three weeks ago. I will miss her unique and wonderful self."