"Emma" is Jane Austen's final gift to the world before she was claimed by her "last illness" at the age of forty. Altough serious matters are raised in the book, it remains comic and light-hearted- which tells us something about the author and her determination to look at life as if it were a big grotesque performance, where every character (especially Emma) has to be intensified to the point of absurd. Some say Jane Austen wrote for "adolescent girls." Not true. Her novels, just like Shakespeare's comedies, can be read at any age. As a literature student I greatly admire Austen's style and her unique characterization. It is certainly her best. Read and enjoy!

Though not her favorite novel, Austen's Emma shines as one of her most beloved. The character of Emma is both believable and lovable. This particular edition is a great keepsake, one you can pass down to your own daughter.

Emma is basically a darling snob. She has a kind, loving heart, and really wants to do good, but makes a tangle of everybody's lives, including her own. I'm sick of flawless, shallow, empty heroines, so Emma's faults and conquering of faults endear her. The unabridged book is slightly complicated (such as old-fashioned language) but if you savor it slowly it is well worth it. The plot is clever, sweet, funny and leaves a satisfied, warm kind of glow in the pit of your stomach. The perfect ending makes you want to cry. Don't spoil THIS novel with any trashy sequels.

TRY WATCHING the Gwyneth Paltrow and Jeremy Northam "Emma."

This is a little gem of a book that details Monica's search for a husband near the end of the Victorian era in England. Monica is not a man-chasing, mercenary type, but her mother has brought her up to recognize that a woman's social success depends entirely on her ability to catch a husband, particularly at a time when eligible men seem to be in short supply.

This is not a novel of action, but rather of subtle interplay between Monica, her domineering yet loving mother, and various friends of the family. It is poignant and fascinating, and has a setting filled with lavish detail. If you enjoy Edith Wharton in particular, you will likely enjoy this book as well.

What a surprising book and what a funny one. The first Penelope Fitzgerald I read and a lovely introduction to her wonderfully witty work. "At Freddie's" is life in a slowly fading London Theatre school for children. It is the 1960's and Freddie, who is the mysterious woman who runs the school, believes that children should be trained for Shakespeare and for the stage - not for the fleeting career of television and advertisements which are starting to pull children from other schools.

Into this world drop Carroll, an unsuprisable Irishman, who doesn't seem to be able to do anything. He applies to Freddie for a job as a teacher but admits he can't really teach, or in fact do anything. Freddie hires him because he is cheap and honest, and he procedes to do just what his interview shows he could do so promisingly - nothing. But he has fallen in love with the other teacher who applied the same day, Hannah. Hannah is more ambitious and wants to 'chose, not be chosen'. A dictate which runs her life. Their relationship is played out against the lives of school's precocious children, mostly the strange friendship of Mattie - a 13 year old child over-actor and the quiet, self-contained 9 year-old, Jonathon.

It was a wonderful, fun read.

"Freddie", a woman who is part institution and part legend, speaks the quote above; she is also the latest spectacular person that Ms. Fitzgerald offers to readers.

The quote is unremarkable until it is penned as an answer to an Accountant named "Unwin", who stated, "Surely a discussion should have a basis of substantial fact." The rejoinder that is the title of this review follows, and you have a good sense that Freddie flaunts convention, floats above the rules that affect others, and when she is confronted with a bit of reality, ends the discussion with her nemesis feeling not only were they wrong, but they are indebted to her. A debt collector not only fails to collect, he leaves his vest for use as a costume for the students of Freddie's school for children of the theatre.

Precocious children are not new to Ms. Fitzgerald's books. In this book the line between child and adult is blurred even further, as these thespians in the making are adept at changing who they are when circumstances or their own whimsy calls. All the affectation that can be associated with their mature counterparts of the stage, are played out by the kids, and this makes for wonderful reading, as age is modified by characterization, and not measured in years.

There are more eccentric players in this book than the others I have read by Ms. Fitzgerald, to sample just one, a gentleman when deciding on which of the sins he would choose, does not pick one with even some benefit in this life, but chooses sloth. His opinion of himself is in line with the wish, and a more pathetic character has rarely appeared.

Into all this there is a love triangle of sorts, a grand piano that is sinking through the floor, "as though wading ashore", and a vast and rich story that Ms. Fitzgerald once again delivers on so few, but so spectacular pages.

Penelope Fitzgerald is at her most devilishly entrancing in this tale revolving around the London acting school run (and I mean RUN!) by Freddie, a larger-than-life Gorgon whose will cannot be resisted. Fitzgerald has fun skewering the backstage pretentions, intrigue and petty jealousies of the London theater world of the early 1960s, but, clearly loving every seedy corner of it, she celebrates it with such gusto that you want to sign up on the spot for a season or two. That combination of wryness and fondness makes this short novel among Fitzgerald's most satisfying. And when Freddie goes out looking for a pound or two, hang on to your wallets!

Don't expect a mindbending Agatha Christie novel when you pick up Fitzgerald's first novel -- it's much more of a British farce making fun of the stuffy art critic world, the English in general (the main character has to deal with his wife Haggie who finds him uninspiring and boring) and anything to do with pretension. The whole premise of the novel is funny: people are queueing for days in the cold for this incredible exhibition of the so called Golden Child, but it turns out to be a fake. At one point, the main character is strangled by the "golden thread" that is supposedly a key part of the exhibit. There is a superb scene when the main character actually is trying to kill time to avoid his wife and decides to stand on line to see the exhibit for himself. He develops a feeling of solidarity with the people in line who share war stories about their wait to see the statue for the brief 20 seconds they are allotted. Fitzgerald captures perfectly this "fan mania" that anyone who has ever lined up for an event will enjoy reading. He chickens out right before actually seeing the exhibit and never makes it. The mystery part of the book is not that great, but the hilarious characters and dry satire make it an enjoyable read.

Fitzgerald's great strengths were already visible in this, her first novel: a wide range of deftly sketeched characters and an ability to make a particular institutional milieu comprehensible. Here it is the British Museum.

The attempted "thriller" part is entertaining, and involves a hilarious visit to the Soviet Union for the novel's hero. The murder mystery is, perhaps, the least interesting of the mysteries in the book, and Fitzgerald was wise to abandon trying to be a genre novelist. Better to show the clashings of incompatible ways of being and doing. But the generic parts are fairly entertaining, and the compassion of the novelist for the butterflies she pins to the page is palpable already in her first novel.

This lady was truly an amazing writer. She started her career at the age of 69, and happily produced a good-sized body of work. "The Golden Child" is the third work of hers that I have read. It's a wonderful book, as I have yet to read anything other from her pen, but it is as different from the other two, as they are from each other.

"The Bookshop" was quite serious, "The Blue Flower" a wonderful historic piece during the period of Goethe's Germany, and now this work which demonstrates her unconstrained wit. She still includes subtle bits of humor, but much is laugh out loud funny. Granted some is a bit dark, but as another reviewer mentioned, it is very "English" as in, "oh...that, well yes, bullet wound you see, no bother, terribly sorry about the carpet". That line is not specifically in the book, but I hope it gives an idea of the fun within "The Golden Child".

The story is populated with great characters; including two of the best curmudgeons I have enjoyed reading. At one point she goes well onto a limb with a performance by one of the Museum's top executives, who is called upon to "lecture" about that which he knows little of. The performance approaches Monty Python humor.

A third book, and a third great read. I look forward to seeing how many other genres she must have handled so well.

Fitzgerald is to be congratulated for her frank portrayal of her father and uncles. Even so, I felt something was being withheld. After all, the Knox brothers were part of the Waugh generation and lived through an incredibly revolutionary period in world history. As interesting as each of these brothers is, it's hard to believe they were as domestic and tweedy as she wishes to think of them. One needs to look elsewhere for the dirt on these fellows (but, alas, I know not where).

My interest was primarily in Ronald Knox, the youngest of the children (the Knoxes had two daughters, as well, but neither of them seems to have made much of an impression on their neice). As a young man Ronald converted to Roman Catholicism, to the chagrin of his father, an Anglican bishop of Evangelical leanings, and of his brother Wilfred, an Anglo-Catholic priest. Although Fitzgerald does not sidestep religious issues, I sensed that she herself was not very religious and that she never quite understood why dogmatics could be so divisive in her family. Ronald wrote so-so detective fiction. His great achievement, however, was the translation of the Latin Bible into modern English for Roman Catholics (sadly at a time when the Roman Catholic church was just about to realize the importance making Bible translations from the original Hebrew and Greek). I wanted to know more about Knox's process of working and the public response to the finished translation. But Fitzgerald, ever bouncing from one Knox brother to the next, gives very little information on this subject.

Fitzgerald doesn't waste much ink, either, on examining sibling rivalry (it must have been strong--not one Knox could be considered a slacker) or on psychoanalysing family dynamics. There are no lessons here to glean about family life in general, nothing that could serve as a mirror to one's relationships with one's own siblings. The Knoxes seem to have been truly unique, and are probably best appreciated as accomplished individuals.

Those looking for juicier portraits of bright young Brits in the years leading up to World War II, should turn to Humphrey Carpenter's "Brideshead Generation: Evelyn Waugh and His Friends" or Martin Green's "Children of the Sun: A Narrative of 'Decadence' in England after 1918."

Why read biographies? Several reasons come to mind: to get a glimpse of a vanished past, to live vicariously through glamorous and interesting people, to learn truths about the good life that survive those vanished pasts and apply to even the unglamorous.

All of these apply in spades to _The Knox Brothers_, novelist Penelope Fitzgerald's 1977 biography of her father, Edmund ("Evoe") Knox and his brothers, Ronald, Wilfred and Dilly.

The most famous of the Knox brothers today is Ronald, a famous British convert to and apologist for Catholicism. His conversion is well-detailed by Fitzgerald, along with the strife it caused within the family: his father was an Anglican bishop, and remained essentially unreconciled to his convert son, and his brother Wilfred also became an Anglican clergyman. Evoe, who also achieved great fame as editor of the humor magazine Punch, was an indulgent agnostic, but Dilly was rigorously atheistic.

Despite such differences, mutual love and respect prevailed among the brothers, and as Fitzgerald writes, "one would think it must have been as clear then as it is now that if human love could rise above the doctrines that divide the Church, then these docrines must have singularly little to do with the love of God." The humane perspective that would later distinguish her novels is on ample display in this biography, as is her wry humor.

Perhaps most fascinating and unusual of the four brothers was Dilly, who served in both world wars as a codebreaker, and played an instrumental role in cracking the German Enigma machine during World War II. Fitzgerald describes his work in generous detail, and places it in the context of the family's general fascination with language and wordplay.

I highly recommend this biography, which like the lives of its subjects is briskly paced and rich in variety. One caveat: if you have no place in your heart for Anglophilia, you may find the personalities of Fleet Street and Oxbridge rather tiresome.

Penelope Fitzgerald produced some of the finest short novels written. Before she started her career as a novelist she wrote these collected biographies of her father and his 3 brothers in 1977. It seems appropriate that this collection of familial histories was updated and placed in its final form by Ms. Fitzgerald shortly before her death.

For those that believe Genetics play a role in the hereditary talent of later generations, this book certainly will reinforce that view. Whether when reviewing her Father's life, or that of his 3 brothers, all these men were exceptional in there own manner. There were characteristics they held in common; amongst them were brilliant wits, and integrity. The latter trait would seem redundant, or perhaps should be one we hope someday will be for all men like her Uncle Wilfred and her Uncle Ronald. Both of these men were Priests, but even here these Brothers maintained their own identities. Wilfred was an Anglo-Catholic Priest, and his Brother was a Priest of The Roman Catholic Church. The History of these men's lives are all of great interest, however the differences in the Religious Denominations, at first so similar to the ear, and then so different theologically, provided some of the more interesting aspects of the book.

Father Ronald went beyond the normal duties of his calling, and expanded his talents not only into journalism, but I believe rather specially as an Author of Detective Novels. All this was in addition to being The Chaplain At Oxford, and a man who translated a revised form of The New Testament, so that so many more could enjoy the writings.

For readers familiar with World War II, the word Enigma has a meaning in excess of the dictionary definition. Enigma was the machine that the Germans used for enciphering their communications, had it remained a secret, the War if nothing else would have been lengthened, perhaps dramatically. Uncle Dillwyn was repeatedly promoted and was critical to "finding a way in" to Enigma, and was credited with contributing to several strategic victories that without the understanding of Enigma could not have taken place.

Her Father was again a man of many gifts, but it is his time as Editor of the legendary "Punch Magazine" that seemed to best define the man's many traits. He too was a writer, journalist, humorist, and devoted Husband and Father. He may or may not have foreseen that a short 6 years after his death his Daughter Penelope would begin her own literary career with a book that paid tribute to he and his brothers.

Ms. Fitzgerald does honor to the memories of her family members without appearing to lose objectivity, and succumbing to fawning over her subjects. If you have read her books, or the interviews she gave none of this will come as a surprise. She was a woman of great talent, minimal ego, and she happily, for readers, shared all her gifts.

I first encountered Penelope Fitzgerald when her novel, The Blue Flower, was introduced to my daughter's book club. That book did not set well with me. I found it to be dull and flat. What a nice surprise to find her collection of short stories in The Means of Escape brilliant and contoured. Ms. Fitzgerald's stories held my attention from beginning to end although I think The Means of Escape and At Hiruharama are the best of the lot. Ms. Fitzgerald has a keen eye for detail, weaving those details into the quirky, yet rich texture of her "story stuff." As a result, she's able to elicit a wide range of human emotions (happiness, sadness, joy, disdain, pity) from her readers. This slim volume is a satisfying read. Don't miss it.

These short stories are handsome. Handsome as in seeing an old woman who still has a certain spark. But they are wily handsome old stories, tricky, like dreams you wake up from before they're over (or maybe they really are over). That's the point, it's hard to tell if the stories are neatly over and a useless exercise to try. And things are not as they may seem. It's much like thinking, as you're falling asleep, counting sheep, wow, these fluffy little sheep jumping gracefully over me really are matted and full of odd little particles.

Ms. Penelope Fitzgerald was one of the greatest new Authors that became known to me over the last year. While I have read all of her novels, I have read only one of her three non-fiction works. I have commented on all, and with one exception I wish she had started writing about 4 decades sooner than she did.

Her novels all had several common denominators, their quality, the scope contained in the length she used, and their length, or more accurately their lack of length. So when I encountered this book that offered 8 stories over a diminutive 117 pages, even as great an admirer as I was incredulous.

The 8 stories are not equal, some are extremely clever, and one or two seemed more like thoughts that were abruptly cut off. Some of her novels ended with the finality of a guillotine blade crashing down, however this was after a good bit of reading had been done. When the stories average out at 14 small pages each, the word abrupt is too tame. Two stories in particular stood out, "Desderatus" and "The Axe". Of these two one showed a side of this woman's writing I never expected. Stephen King easily could have placed "The Axe", in a collection of his short stories, and it would have fit beautifully. Had this woman made the decision she may have been a writer that brought us classics in the Genre of "Frankenstein" and "Dracula". Lights definitely go on and stay for, "The Axe".

This is not a five star work by this wonderful Author. However I rate it as such for all the great writing she shared in her all too brief career. Taken as a whole this is probably a 3.5 to 4 star work. I miss the lady's exercising of her craft too much not to give the work 5 stars. Think of it as a thank you for all she gave readers.

This book was really good. It showed Russia's personality beautifully. Although it was an intriguing story, it lacked a lot of action. If you're looking for a book with a somewhat non-existent plot, then this would be great for you. Just when you expect the story to get more interesting, it ends. There isn't much of a conclusion so the story doesn't really wrap itself up. I found it somewhat frustrating, how it just ended in a sentence. It is a very well written novel. It wasn't very long, which was nice. Fitzgerald does an excellent job describing Russia and the characters' feelings. Although it can be boring and dry at times, the reader truly becomes thrown into the lifestyle of a very interesting Russian family.

A truly beautiful and moving book permeated with humor, insight and compassion. It describes an English family living amidst the overwhelming chaos of life in Moscow in the early nineteenth century. Penelope Fitzgerald reminds one of Jane Austen with her soft, ironic touches and delicately-drawn characters.

This is an evocative book, I was transported back in time to pre-communist Russia; her descriptions pull you into the story and hold you. I purposely read only two chapters at a time because I didn't want to leave that place and those characters. Read this as I did, curled up with a mug of tea late at night or early in the morning.

Penelope Fitzgerald, though she did not publish her first novel until she was sixty, had, by the time she died this year, become one of England's most awarded and revered authors. Critics describe her as a miniaturist, by which they apparently mean that her novels are small sketches of particular aspects of life. Offshore, for which she won her first Booker Prize, is a good example of this form. Based in part on her time spent living on a barge in the Thames, the novel tells the story of a brief period in the lives of a group of eccentrics who live aboard ship in Battersea Reach on the Thames. Actually, it only barely tells a story, it is more an exercise in establishing characters and a setting than anything else.

In order for this to work, you either have to have fascinating characters or a spellbinding setting, she has neither. At first, as you're reading, she seems about to update Our Mutual Friend, with it's central theme of people, on the margins of society, living on and off of London's great waterway. But where Dickens creates unforgettable characters and plops them down in a labyrinthine plot, these characters are only mildly amusing and there's virtually no plot. The other author who sprang to mind is Joseph Mitchell, the great New Yorker essayist whose works are collected in Up In The Old Hotel. He was a master at crafting portraits that were small masterpieces around the bums and lunatics of New York City, but there are no Joe Goulds in Offshore.

This is a quick enough read (my copy is just 141 pages) and there's a periodic chuckle, but I found it difficult to care about the characters and am mystified by the book's reputation. One of the obituaries below refers to Ms Fitzgerald's "remarkable sensitivities." I am perfectly willing to concede that I am a man of severely limited sensitivities and so the fault for my not enjoying the book may well lie with me.

GRADE: C-

Penelope Fitzgerald's "Offshore" is an intriguing and complex work. On one hand, it's filled with vivid scenes and lively, realistic characters. On the other hand, the book feels incomplete, and we're left wondering...what? who? where? Do we actually learn anything crucial about these characters? I think so...but I'm not sure what.

First, the scenes are definitely vivid, peopled with real-feeling characters. Fitzgerald is marvelous at characterization. Woodie's unconcern about his boat's leak because the water has risen only as far as the first bunk in his bedroom. Tilda and Martha's discovery of an antique tile in the river bottom and their subsequent haggling with an antiques dealer. Heinrich's polite demeanor - we learn more about him through what he doesn't say.

But all in all, the main characters, especially Nenna, are indecisive. Nenna doesn't visit her husband because she doesn't want to face the possibility that she might lose him. Nenna lives on the barge because she doesn't know where else to live. Nenna and her family move to Canada only because her sister's forceful personality overwhelms her. Such indecisiveness is not the great stuff of memorable literary characters.

But...as Nenna's neighbor Maurice mentions, the people on the barges live half on the water and half on land precisely because they can't decide who they are. The barges then are the metaphor for this indecisiveness...and that's ultimately what the novel is about.

I wanted more than that. I wanted a novel three times as large, a book that lived with the characters longer, and illustrated the conflicts more clearly. What exactly was at risk for Nenna in not seeing her husband? She admits that seeing him might dash her hope of living with him - but people say a lot of things, and she appears quite content living without him in the first place.

I would've also liked to have visited with the characters after the crucial changes that altered their lives. Why exactly did Nenna choose to move to Canada? How has Richard come to accept his fate as faithful suburban husband?

In any case, Fitzgerald's prose is fantastic, and the layout of scenes is near perfect. I think it's rather a compliment to her that I feel this book is incomplete. I plan to read more of her books in the future.

Penelope Fitzgerald's work is not about length. It's about depth. Her mastry lies in her ability to be as nuanced and profound as she in such few words. I think this is her best book.

Cutting straight to the chase after reading the very polarized views of other reviewers: Although Penelope Fitzgerald's slender novel contains much to admire, it is most certainly not composed to be a popular entertainment, and its successes will appeal more to admirers of "literary fiction"--and, hence, to "critics"--than perhaps to the general reader. Fitzgerald presumes the reader knows something, and cares, about the late 18th Century context; she hopes we might be stimulated by imagining contemporaries of Fichte and Kant discussing their ideas; she presumes that, to us, "romanticism" is more than a word or a line from Shelly and that, by recovering, or compiling, everyday details from a time and world long lost, she can help us understand the romantic sensibility and, ultimately, Hardenberg's--and our--ambiguous longing for "the Blue Flower."

I particularly enjoyed Fitzgerald's vignette approach--55 short chapters, each of which is a set piece, generally with a wry punchline--which allows Fitzgerald to view Friedrich von Hardenberg's improbable romance at odd angles. I for one marvel at this choice of subject, a decision by a professional author as seemingly improbable and hopelessly romantic as the subject itself.

And yet, despite the author's absolute mastery of her material, her strong cast of winning characters, and the wonderful--although irretrievably high-brow--sense of humor suffusing the entire narrative, I never felt myself emotionally drawn in. One reads on because each page is delightful, and, for many readers (obviously, me included) this is sufficient. But on the basis of slender narrative evidence, we are expected to understand, rather than led toward empathy with, Hardenberg and his inconceivable attachment. Perhaps Fitzgerald's plan was, in writing the simplest of love stories, to avoid cluttering the universe with additional examples of cheap sentimentalism, leaving us with a "mystery of love." In different hands, the novel clearly might have become just that--dismissively sentimental. Instead, she goes the other way: Fitzgerald is a cool observer keenly attuned, in a very modern sense, to the ironies her story poses, but she never truly enages our hearts.

_The Blue Flower_ is the story of the romance of Friedrich von Hardenburg, later famous as the German Romantic poet-novelist-philosopher Novalis, with a 12-year old girl, Sophie Von Kuhn. The story is told in brief chapters, from the points of view of several characters: Hardenburg himself, a female friend who may fancy herself a rival of Sophie's, Hardenburg's sister, Sophie's sister, and so on. The large cast of characters is wonderfully described, each character briefly and accurately limned, and all treated with humor and affection. In addition, details of how life was lived in 18th century Saxony are casually strewn throughout the book, and a very accurate-feeling picture of everyday life, and more importantly, how everyday people thought, is the result.

The main characters are odd but interesting: Fritz von Hardenburg is a young artist with Romantic attitudes: and at the same time realistically a brother and a son, and also a fairly conscientious apprentice salt-mine inspector. Sophie is a 12-year old girl of very little intelligence, and is unsparingly presented as such (indeed, her character is probably treated with less sympathy than any other in the book.)

As far as I can tell, every character in the book (at least every even moderately prominent character) is historical, though it is hard for me to be sure how closely Fitzgerald's characterizations resemble the historical record. Knowledge of the historical events depicted here cast a sort of pall over the events of the novel: we know that Sophie will die very young, and von Hardenburg not much later. (Novalis first became famous for a series of prose poems written in Sophie's memory ("Hymns to the Night"), and his major work, the novel _Heinrich von Ofterdingen_, was left uncompleted at his death.) Despite this pall, the book is funny, engaging, and beautiful in a delicate-seeming fashion.

This is a wonderful evocation of the Romantic era in all its intellectual fervor -- and its immense folly. The clue to the whole book, I think, is on page 2 (except that you have to read Chapter 8 about Fichte to understand its full meaning). If reality is what we THINK it is, it's perfectly reasonable for Fritz to declare that Sophie is his "soul's guide" -- even if, in reality, she's 12 years old and dumb as a box of rocks.
The author uses well-chosen and vivid details (the ingredients of soups, the lapel inkwells used by students) to bring the poet's world to life, and to point up the contrast between his aspirations and the stifling family and social obligations he must contend with. But this isn't an earnest historical study; it's touching, and surprisingly funny too. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

is how I would describe Fitzgerald's "The Bookshop". It traces out the pattern of quiet lives in a small English town, especially that of Florence Green. Mrs. Green wants to pursue her dream of owning a bookshop (she worked in one as a child) and pushing her life forward in a new direction. The book entails her trials and tribulations of getting her shop up and running, and this is the context in which she interacts with other characters in the book (my favorite is Mr. Brundish). The Bookshop is not a plot-driven book, preferring to sketch out character studies, and offer observations about the pettiness and triviality in small town life. However, I didn't feel I was able to get to know Mrs. Green as much as I would have liked - to get inside her head more.

Readers who enjoyed Mme. Bovary, Main Street and Waterland should take the short drive to Ms. Fitzgerald's "Bookshop", being well-acquainted with the lay of the land. For the general reader, while "The Bookshop" is not a great book in my opinion, it is definitely a good one, well worth taking a look at. The book is like Florence Green herself: she may not be everything we've wished for, but she is certainly great company. I look forward to re-reading "The Bookshop" and Ms. Fitzgerald's other writings. (just my 2 cents - your mileage may vary).

I noticed that several readers objected to the bleak ending of this book. Fortunately or unfortunately, I already knew the ending because it was given away in one of the New York Times reviews (don't they tell them not to do that?), and so I was prepared for it. Ms. Fitzgerald seems to me to be a genius: She is almost uncannily observant in terms of both landscape and character (including animals in the latter), and she provides a smooth and pleasant read in the tradition of Anita Brookner, Elizabeth Bowen, and Elizabeth Taylor -- a perfect book for a rainy Sunday and, for me, as satisfying as a pot of good English tea. A bit too much cuteness creeps in at times ("a bit twee," as the English would say), and I found the poltergeist not convincing. (However, I was interested to read in Amazon.con's interview with the author that the poltergeist was based on an actual experience of the author's in a real-life small-town bookstore.) All in all, I belive Ms. Fitzgerald will be a wonderful discovery for almost anyone who loves English literature.

I had previously read, and been most disappointed by, Penelope Fitzgerald's novel The Gate of Angels. Thus, it is only because of its strong recommendations and very short length (if it's too bad, at least I won't waste a lot of time reading it) that I took up her novel The Bookshop. Dickensian in the naming of places (the book is set in Hardborough, which it certainly is) and some characters, but not in length (only 123 pgs), Lively tells the story of a middle-aged widow who invests her small inheritence in a bookstore, the only such enterprise in her new hometown. In so doing, she makes a few enemies, and is at last forced to succumb to the small-minded pettiness that rural communities can foster. This is a sad book, and it makes one grieve for how mean people can be when they wish. That said, it is an excellent novel, and ample food for thought