Customer Reviews

Beginning of Spring

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is the most likable of the four PF novels I've read (I admire all of them). Her ability to create characters with extreme economy is breath-taking. Even more than in _Blue Flower_, she illuminates a milieu distant and time and space, the Moscow of a British businessman in Moscow ca. 1913 (i.e., on the verge of the First World War, the Bolshevik revolution further off). I don't really know that there were households or businesses like those she brings to life. If the concrete details are imagined rather than researched, her accomplishment is even greater, but it is also considerable if she has "merely" brought back to life vanished Russian and expatrate English ways of being.

One of Fitzgerald's many gifts is creating prematurely wise prepubescent female characters (as in _The Bookshop_ and _Offshore_) who view the fumblings of adults with clear-eyed but mostly gracious bemusement and fitfully attempt to keep the adults from totally mucking up. Dolly takes that role here. The omniscient narrator has her own compassionate bemusement at the frailities of adults who want to be loved and try to be useful to others. Frank and Selwyn are prime examples from this book. As far as I can tell, the only thing Ms. Fitzgerald can't do is create rounded prepubescent male characters (Ben here).

Did your copy have 187 pages? If it had more, I would very much like to know how your version finishes. I, and others have commented on how Ms. Fitzgerald leaves a certain ambiguity at the end of some of her works. She invites her readers to finish the story based on what she has shared, or the reader has understood. This time around, I first felt I was reading a work like Dickens' unfinished, "The Mystery Of Edwin Drood". However this time it was a bit abrupt, a door opens, the reader pops their head in, and, she decapitates the reader with efficiency that Dr. Guillotine would have admired.

This is the fifth of her nine novels I have read, and it will be difficult to top this work. Everything I have read has been excellent, so the pleasure of reading her work is just a matter of degree. The complaint as stated at the beginning is more frustration than anything else. So much appears to be shared with the reader, that ultimately deception is far to mild a word, and then when you think the puzzle is complete; she adds another thousand potential pieces by bringing the story to an abrupt halt.

But the story really is quite complete. After you read what she has written a logical explanation follows. She sets the process in motion, steps back, and knows the reader will continue to follow her lead. She pulls the strings of a reader like twine on a top. Once pulled she can step back, the top continues to spin. She is as manipulative as any writer I have had the pleasure to read, she also respects her readers with the presumption they will read what she gives them, and though left wanting more, will be able to put their own finish to what she has written.

I cannot use any names, as it would ruin the piece. She produces one character that is such a brilliant fraud, that when his actions come to be known, his victims are left with mouths agape when they should be throttling him. As she has done in other works, she has children that are well beyond precocious, and other players that the reader is routinely lead to underrate.

Ms. Penelope Fitzgerald was a great discovery for me, as I knew nothing of her or her work. She started writing late in life, and sadly died earlier this year. The collective work she has left behind, is as good a written legacy any writer could have left, for all who love to read.

Many writers tend to get stuck on one theme and write the same story over and over. Not Penelope Fitzgerald! I've enjoyed THE BOOK SHOP, OFFSHORE, and THE BLUE FLOWER, each so different that I'm amazed the same author penned them.

THE BEGINNING OF SPRING is my most recent Fitzgerald reading, and it may be my favorite so far. Frank Reid, the main character, runs a printing company in Moscow, a business he inherited from his father. Frank was born and brought up in Moscow although he is still considered a foreigner because his parents were English. Frank was sent back to England to polish his education and while there he married Nellie, a woman who felt constrained by the narrowness of her English hometown. She was ready to leave that town, but she wasn't prepared for Moscow and could never quite adjust. One day, she gathers up their three children and leaves on the train to return to England. Not being able to cope with the children, she sends them back to Frank before she continues onto England. Frank is mystified by his wife's actions and doesn't know if he will be able to cope with the children either.

This is the story of a domestic crisis, but the backdrop of unrest brewing in Russia clearly presages the Revolution. The year is 1913. Frank doesn't know how much longer he can maintain his business, and he's not sure where his sympathies lie.

Ms. Fitzgerald does have one trick: she seems to lead the reader one direction, and then bam! you find that's not where she was headed afterall. I thought THE BEGINNING OF SPRING was quietly wonderful, but when it concluded I found that it just seemed quiet and the resolution was resounding.

I wanted to like "The Beginning of Spring." Infact, I wanted to love it. After all, Penelope Fitzgerald is one of the finest writers we have today. She writes precisely and succintly which is difficult considering the complexities of her characters and topics. However, what I find lacking in "The Beginning of Spring" is an interesting story line. When Ms. Fitzgerald tells the story of Frank Reid and his wife Nellie who suddenly leaves one day without returning she presents us with an interesting premise. How Frank copes with this loss and measures he must undertake to raise his children is well accompolished by Ms. Fitzgerald. It is amazing to me the clarity that Ms. Fitzgerald has in the human condition and the psychological process we go through to cope. However, the other major story line about Frank's business and the political upheavel of Russia seems laborious. I lost interest in her discussions about Russia's communism and the effects it has on Frank's business - too much time appeared to be spent detailing the Russian society. Perhpas it is just me, but unlike "The Blue Flower," a magnificent piece of literature which focused more directly on the characters, "The Beginning of Spring" is more of a statement about Russia and the times which left me unsatisfied. I have to give this novel a good rating, however, as Ms. Fitzgerald's writing is nothing short of perfection. I will continue to read her works.

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.

Fitzgerald, in this book as with another I've read, shows herself to be a precise and evocative miniaturist. The sweep of the events surrounding the main character, the English gentleman Frank, is brought into his small world, one of limited perceptions and a desperate need for equilibrium. A great deal of the novel is happening out of the range of Frank, and just as much is unperceived or misperceived by Frank. So that the ending is a series of shocks, some of which are not quite comprehensible.

Frank sees it all in domestic terms: his wife has left him, and left him with the chidlren; he is advised by his friend, the seemingly muddle-headed idealist Selwyn; visited by his brother-in-law, also seeming to be muddle-headed, Charlie. But the Russian Revolution is swirling around him, and encroaches upon that world, re-defining this crisis in Frank's small life.

Fitzgerald at once brings a wry humor to the novel, but it has an Austen edge to it, and is in an environment that adds a shadow of pervading seriousness. At the same time, we see more than Frank but less than many others, caught between the English humor and the socio-political storm.

It is a subtle and provocative book. And short.

Imagine Moscow in 1913: The Russian society is in transition; traditional political structures are being challenged by popular movements; industrial technological advances are leading to workers' unrests; an atmosphere of foreboding is palpable in every strata of society including among the English expatriates in Moscow. Frank Reid, an English business man, born and raised in Moscow, is highly conscious of the changing political landscape. After years of training in Western Europe he has returned to Moscow with his young family to take over his father's large printing press operations. Following an apparently harmonious and organized period during which the family had settled, Frank's wife Nellie suddenly departs without warning, leaving Frank to balance challenges at work with new responsibilities at home with his three children.

Penelope Fitzgerald's novel weaves a delicate and gracefully imagined portrayal of the man at the centre, his attempts at normalcy despite inner doubts and conflicts. In fact, all her characters are exquisitely drawn and remain memorable beyond the reading of the novel. Selwyn Crane, the poetry-writing accountant who is also a follower of the Tolstoyan movement, is one such character, who is endearing despite his rather bumbling personality. Amongst other, possibly questionable, advice he recommends to Frank to hire the young Russian peasant girl, Lisa Ivanovna, as a governess for the children. She remains a mysterious, yet attractive, character and may not be as innocent and placid as she appears.

Frank's consistent efforts to stay out of the political turmoil of the moment, by refusing to use his presses for political pamphlets and other such material, are in some way mirrored by the author's concentration on the private lives of her protagonists. However, the complex realities of the day are always present, bubbling under the surface, subtly evoked and touched on by Fitzgerald, almost as an aside, through brief vignettes of specific incidents or, and especially, as part of the different lively conversations. Reading the exchanges between Frank and his various very engaged counterparts - whether other expatriates or Russian business partners - is a constant enjoyment.

While the novel is not really plot driven at all, it is full of off-beat scenarios that underscore Fitzgerald's much appreciated sense of humour and irony. Finally, Moscow in March cannot be imagined realistically without the weather. Fitzgerald succeeds superbly as she weaves her suggestive descriptions of the unpleasantness of the wet, grey, icy, foggy atmosphere of late winter into the story and the moods of the character. One scene stands for many: Frank takes a different, rather unpleasant route home through slush and ice along the river to escape an encounter with an older English woman who the minister's wife may want to suggest as a governess for Frank's children. And, of course, every winter ends with the beginning of spring...

Fitzgerald's writing is a delight for her lively depicted characters, her often understated yet affecting portrayal of social conditions and human relationships, set in a specific period of time. Having previously read The Blue Flower with great interest and enjoyment, I was highly motivated to read this novel. Her novel adds a lovely intricate portrait of a group of Muscovites that included English expatriates to the rich Russian literature dealing with that period in time.

Finally, I have to admit to a personal bias as regards the theme and time characterized in this novel. Having inherited a distant family connection with Moscow, I have visited Moscow several time and studied Russian language and culture. Despite the time lag to 1913, some aspects of Fitzgerald's novel still ring very authentic to me. [Friederike Knabe]

My immediate assessment is that THE BEGINNING OF SPRING is not a "great" novel in the sense of one freighted with meaning and significance, though it has a certain elusive, chimerical quality and I might be missing something. It is, however, highly literate and thoroughly entertaining, even captivating. It is the fourth or fifth of Penelope Fitzgerald's novels that I have read (including her Booker Prize-winning "Offshore"), and it is the one I most enjoyed reading.

The setting is Moscow in March 1913, as the ice melts and spring unfolds once again. Revolutionary fervor and social unrest also are blossoming. The protagonist is Frank Reid, an Englishman who has spent most of his 40 years in Russia. At the beginning of the novel, his English wife Nellie suddenly leaves him and their three young children, apparently to return to England, though this is uncertain. A short while later, a young Russian woman from a peasant background, Lisa Ivanovna, enters the Reid household to look after Frank's children and what often blooms in spring blooms in Frank.

All of the characters are characters, and there is something slightly amiss or askew with each of them. Despite the surface matter-of-fact frankness of the characters, things often are not what they seem. The story is told swiftly, deftly, with wry and sometimes barbed humor. The narrative is generously dosed with historical details that make it a masterpiece of time and place. For me, there was only one false step, a scene near the end touched with the supernatural or with symbolism. Otherwise, THE BEGINNING OF SPRING is an extremely well-crafted novel.

P.S.: The title of this review is the motto of one of the characters, and it is aptly exemplified with the last twist of the novel, which occurs in its last sentence.

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.