SOURCE: “Signposts Pointing the Wrong Way,” in Spectator, August 28, 1999, p. 36.

In the following review, Brookner offers a positive assessment of Destiny.

Facts emerge slowly from the matrix of this excellent novel [Destiny], slowly because its unreliable narrator, Christopher Burton, has to cope not only with the critical condition of his marriage but with various ailments of an intransigent nature. He is in the Rembrandt Hotel, Knightsbridge; he has just enjoyed a very large breakfast—unwise, in view of his recent heart bypass operation—when he receives a telephone call from Italy which informs him that his son has died. The death has taken place in a clinic in Turin, where the son, Marco, was confined. He was schizophrenic, and had attacked himself with a screwdriver. This detail must be kept, Burton decides, from his wife. The shock resolves itself into a moment of pure lucidity: with the son...