Innocence [Paperback]

Penelope Fitzgerald (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 3, 1998

Beautiful Chiara is the last of the Ridolfi, a Florentine family of long lineage and eccentric habits. She is smitten with Salvatore, a brilliant but penniless doctor, a rational man who wants nothing to do with romance. This is the story of how these two--with the best intentions, the kindest of instincts, and the most meddlesome of friends--make each other wonderfully miserable inside.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This charming, amusing and deft novel by a winner of the Booker Prize is set in Florence in the 1950s, though the characters might have stepped directly out of the Renaissance. The slightly eccentric characters share the trait suggested by the title, and never once does Fitzgerald strike a false note. Unique in the annals of Euro-American marital commerce is an aging count who trades his aristocratic lineage to an American in marriage and is "left worse off than before." His daughter, beautiful, featherbrained Chiara, loves the solemnly scientific neurologist Salvatore, who has fled his native southern Italy and his father's deep involvement in politics; the elder is a passionate disciple of one of Mussolini's most distinguished victims. Others in a richly peopled scene include Maddalena, accurately known as Aunt Mad, and the hearty, bumptious, meddling, English schoolgirl Barney. This is a comedy of manners in the distinctively English tradition, brimming with the sweet pleasures of that high style. The novel shines with intelligence, wit, sly irony and the observant eye of a writer who seems unable to miss anything pertinent to her vocation.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"Clever and dangerously beguiling." The Los Angeles Times

"As intoxicating as a shot of aged brandy . . . a true sensualist's feeling for Italy." The Washington Post

"The fullest and richest of her novels." Time Magazine

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books; 1 edition (September 3, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0395908728
• ISBN-13: 978-0395908723
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #688,737 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Something has to come last, October 23, 2000

By 

taking a rest - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Innocence (Paperback)

I very much enjoy Ms. Fitzgerald's work, of the nine novels she wrote I have read 8, with The Booker Award Winning work "Offshore" remaining. Presuming those that bestowed the Award were correct, and the other reviewers of "Innocence" are also correct, if I were to rank the 8 novels I have read this is number 8, and is likely to be number 9 when "Offshore" has been completed.

Ms. Fitzgerald often has left a book with the ending open, at times in an initially jarring manner. This is again the case with "Innocence", and the ending is not alone. This work is lengthy when compared to most of Ms. Fitzgerald's works, and its length allows for more of the wonderful characters she creates, and the usually odd circumstances they create, or are victimized by. In this case, with one exception, even when well done, I generally felt nothing or actively disliked the players.

The exception is Barney, one of the most unusual, colorful, and unconventional characters Ms. Fitzgerald created. When a female is described when smiling, as having the perfect teeth for an Ogress you are reading about someone interesting. Barney is overwhelming in everything she does, there are no half measures, and the world of half tones is invisible to her. Snap decisions based upon a handshake suffice to sanction or condemn a marriage, choose a mate, and serve as a basis for her turning her life 180 degrees in less than a moment.

There is one other prominent player in the book, and he is the Doctor. However he is as annoying as he is prominent, and there is nothing entertaining or clever about him. He interacts with a variety of people who are all uniformly one dimensional, and are impossible to care about, much less dislike, they, like the story, drift along.

But as I said there is Barney. You have to love a woman who asks a pregnant friend, "Do you want a girl, or a little teapot?" Ms. Fitzgerald is a wonderful writer, and even this book is better than many other writers I have read. The previous works have just been so much better, that this was a disappointment.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Worth Reading More Than Once, February 5, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Innocence (Paperback)

"Innocence" is a beautiful novel, clever and subtle. The picture of an Italian family in mid-1950's Tuscany is brought to life with astonishing economy and charm. Everything necessary to understand and empathize with the characters is there on the page. Penelope Fitzgerald was truly an artist.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Pleasant, rather conventional social comedy, May 19, 2000

By 

Stephen O. Murray "Stephen O. Murray" (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Innocence (Paperback)

"Innocence" may be Penelope Fitzgerald's most conventional novel. It is the first of those (7) that I've read that I didn't finish in a day. As usual, it is character-driven with a rich assortment of characters, a precisely limned milieu (Tuscany in the mid-50s), and several desultory plots filled with misunderstandings. The focus of this rather Forsterian novel is not on the overconfident, tall young Englishwoman running amok in Italy. I'm not sure there is a focus. What clicks between the romantic leads, Chiara, an Italian countess just back from an English convent school and Salvatore, a hypersensitive-to-perceived slights doctor of Southern peasant origins, remains mysterious. The (not particularly prosperous) noble family throws up no objections, though an aunt's attempt to help the newlyweds nearly has fatal consequences. The doctor's father was an admirer of Gramsci and brought his son, then aged ten, to visit the dying Gramsci (for me the book's most memorable scene).