A Start in Life (by Anita Brookner)

Who can resist a book (especially at 25 cents) that begins like this: Dr Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature. I'm not sure how much I actually enjoyed this novel (I found it exceedingly sombre, yet was so drawn in by the writing that I couldn't stop reading), but I imagine that not having read her work before it may have served as a good introduction. If most of her books are like this though, I'm not sure if I'd want to gobble them all up, or avoid them altogether. But before I decide, does anyone have a favourite Anita Brookner novel that they feel I MUST read?

My favourite passage (which probably says more about me than about the book):

But now things were different. Work was a refuge and she found herself unable to seek that particular sort of asylum. Work, she thought, is a paradox: it is the sort of thing people do out of sheer inability to do anything else. Work is the chosen avocation of those who have no other calls on their time. (p. 67)