Obituaries

Anita Brookner, a British author of lean, elegiac and stylistically polished novels who was once labeled the “mistress of gloom” for her depiction of bleak and disappointed lives, usually of women, died on Thursday. Source: Anita Brookner, whose bleak fiction won the Booker Prize, dies at 87 – The Boston Globe

Pat Conroy always managed to put South Carolina’s weirder qualities into gloriously humorous and scientific perspective. This is a rare art as it requires a brand of honesty most people run from before they have to think too hard about it. This honesty requires ownership of both the good and bad aspects of history, requires

Pat Conroy, whose tortured family life and the scenic marshlands of coastal South Carolina served as unending sources of inspiration for his fiction, notably the novels “The Great Santini,” “The Lords of Discipline” and “The Prince of Tides,” died on Friday. He was 70.His death was confirmed by Todd Doughty, the vice president, executive director

Umberto Eco, an Italian scholar in the arcane field of semiotics who became the author of best-selling novels, most notably the blockbuster medieval mystery “The Name of the Rose,” died on Friday in Italy. He was 84. Source: Umberto Eco, Italian Semiotician and Best-Selling Author, Dies at 84 – The New York Times

Harper Lee, whose first novel, “To Kill a Mockingbird,” about racial injustice in a small Alabama town, sold more than 10 million copies and became one of the most beloved and most taught works of fiction ever written by an American, died on Friday in Monroeville, Ala., where she lived. She was 89. Source: Harper