I finished this a few weeks ago, and have been thinking about it off and on ever since. Like so many of Penelope Fitzgerald’s novels, it’s a book that seems deeply strange, and yet, the more I think about it, the harder I find to explain why. I was tempted to say that it has no plot, but that’s actually not at all true — upon reflection, the book contains a fairly typical kind of central storyline, with a few sideplots about minor characters (the novel is about a school of acting for children, run by the formidable Freddie, along with a winsomely outlandish cast of her employees and pupils). But it doesn’t feel that way as you’re reading. There’s an odd lack of momentum, which isn’t to say that you aren’t absorbed and wanting to keep reading, but rather that the plot seems, somehow, tangential and beside the point.
Yet, neither is the real focus on the characters, many of whom are delightfully eccentric, so outlandish that they seem almost like caricatures. I unfortunately left my copy of the book with my mother so I can’t give you a quote as an example, but there’s an absolutely hilarious description of a man whose defining feature is a melancholy and resigned acceptance of his own mediocrity, it’s a real scream. And I guess this is probably the real point — the prose itself. So many of Fitzgerald’s sentences stop you in your tracks; they’re absolutely astonishing in their sharp strangeness and biting humor. Similarly to Muriel Spark, but honestly, Fitzgerald is the more complex and intricate of the two. Barbara Pym also comes to mind. One of these mid-century women writers who is now being rediscovered and celebrated because she’s absolutely amazing. But this was an especially good one of hers, I think.
Kasia Reads 