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In comparing Anita Brookner to writers as dissimilar as Proust and Barbara Cartland, critics reveal a level of uncertainty and dissonance in their approaches to her œuvre. Not surprisingly, gendered reactions, primarily from male critics, have relegated her work to “women’s novels,” a bleak and limited landscape of organized complaint about “menstrual cramps” and “recurring migraines.” Their intemperate dismissals contrast with feminist approaches situating Brookner within the range of autonomous women writers who interrogate the canon by prioritizing the focalized subject; or, in the words of Adrienne Rich, “by being and saying themselves.” This article posits that easy dismissals of her novels as effete “women’s work” are past consideration; instead it locates Brookner within the dynamic scope of reflexive feminist writing, a position she affirms in her final novel Strangers, by reiterating or subverting paradigmatic textual devices toward a ludic and resilient leave-taking.