Customer Reviews

Innocence

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

 

 

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.

"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.

"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).

Penelope Fitzgerald is amazing! Each of her books is unique, and I simply can't decide which I like best. INNOCENCE is splendid. And it is so Italian!

Penelope Fitzgerald did not start publishing novels until she was over sixty, but then she came out with nine compact volumes, amazingly varied in their setting and subject, but all filled with deep human wisdom. Her two best books, in my opinion, are THE BLUE FLOWER, set in the Germany of the early Romantics, and THE BEGINNING OF SPRING, set in Moscow shortly before the Russian Revolution. INNOCENCE takes place around Florence in the nineteen-fifties, when the Italian economy was beginning to re-establish itself after the war. Its leading characters, however, the Ridolfis, are aristocratic holdovers from a much earlier age. The family villa, the Ricordanza, is in disrepair due to lack of funds; the present Conte lives a distinguished but precarious life in a flat in Florence, accompanied by his daughter Chiara when she is home from her convent school in England; the family vineyards are run by her cousin Cesare, a man with few words but a good heart.

Near the beginning of this wry comedy (whose quality of romantic excess comes closest to THE GATE OF ANGELS), Chiara announces her engagement to a thirty-year-old doctor, Salvatore Rossi, and the larger part of the book shows how this romance came about. Rossi is from the South, a self-made man of humble origins, whose medical vocation was established at the age of ten when his father took him to visit the socialist Antonio Gramsci on his prison deathbed. Both lovers suffer from a stubborn innocence: Chiara in her impulsive generosity, Salvatore in his foolish pride. Their courtship is a whirlwind of misunderstandings; they seem as adept at making themselves miserable as the other happy. Likeable as they are, one wants to pick them up and shake them!

Fitzgerald is extraordinary for her ability to immerse herself in every aspect of Italian life of this period. This is far from the tourist Tuscany of fiction, and it is sometimes hard to recall that the book was not written by an Italian. An Italian, moreover, with an extraordinarily wide range of experience, encompassing people from all walks of life: aristocrats, workers, rich, poor, intellectuals, communists, and Vatican officials. It is so full of observations about history, politics, the economy, manners, and regional customs that it might almost be used as a source book. In some ways the texture of the story is more interesting than the story it contains. Fitzgerald does not make it easy for the reader; she expects us to share her knowledge rather than having her explain it -- several quotations, for instance, are left in the original Italian untranslated (it seems they are modified Dante). Despite its brief length and considerable wit, be warned: this can be a challenging book.

[Nothing that I can possibly say here is half so good as A. S. Byatt's wonderful account of Fitzgerald's novels in THE THREEPENNY REVIEW, an indispensable essay for anybody interested in this very varied author. It is available on line; select past issues #73.]

Penelope Fitzgerald's career as a novelist -- she also was a noted biographer and essayist -- divided into two phases: first, novels set in England and relating in some way to her own life (one of which, "Offshore", won the Booker Prize); and second, novels that were more imaginary and with historical settings, usually foreign to England.

INNOCENCE (1986) was the first of her novels from this second phase. It is an offbeat comedy. Set in Italy in the mid-1950s, it revolves around the courtship and early years of marriage between Chiara Ridolfi, a young Italian countess from Florence whose family has lost much of its wealth, and Salvatore Rossi, a doctor from a backwater village in southern Italy. Chiara is a little on the flighty side, and Salvatore is overly sensitive about his plebian background, astoundingly self-centered, and often rude. Other principal characters (and they all are "characters" as well) are Chiara's father Giancarlo, her aunt Maddalena, her cousin Cesare (who maintains the family farm and vineyards), and her close friend from the convent school Holy Innocents in England she attended, Lavinia ("Barney") Gore-Barnes. The six of them find themselves in, or get themselves into, all kinds of odd situations which would embarrass, even mortify, most of us, but for them (usually) they prove to be so much water off a duck's back.

The novel's genre, I suppose, is "social comedy." But INNOCENCE is not really satiric, nor for the most part is it "laugh-out-loud." It pokes fun at its characters but more, to borrow a phrase, at "the human comedy." The humor is on the droll side, although some of the goings on approach the madcap and zany. INNOCENCE is literate, entertaining, and often witty. It is not much more, although I don't sense that Fitzgerald aspired for it to be much more.

At the conclusion of the novel, after tragedy has been averted seemingly through happenstance, Salvatore Rossi exclaims, "What's to become of us? We can't go on like this." Cesare, the taciturn one, responds: "Yes, we can go on like this. We can go on exactly like this for the rest of our lives."

I so wanted to love this book. And I tried. But try as I might, and as beautifully written as it was, I could not identify with the characters. We are given only the tiniest glimpse of the first encounter between a young woman and a cold male doctor, and from this un-rememberable encounter, we are supposed to believe that they are so wildly obsessed with each other that nothing can keep them apart. And yet - the doctor yells at the girl, insults her, chases her away - but feels sorry later, and tells his friend that he cannot be happy without her. And she - somehow presses on (and on, and on) in spite of his frightfully ugly spirit. If only their first encounter had been passionate or even exciting (!) I would have been able to believe the rest.

I must agree with the reviewer from California. The author has a wonderful opportunity to show the reader scenes which explain why the protagonist is drawn to her difficult lover. She misses the boat! Not only do we get very little interaction between these two characters, but it is difficult to come to care about them. The setting has so many possibilities, and I was truly disappointed.

The book is noteworthy for its fine writing and its elegant Italian setting. Fitzgerald was a genius of a writer. Brother and sister Giancarlo Ridolfi and Maddalena are reunited in old age since their spouses, English and American, prefer not to live in Florence.

Giancarlo's daughter Chiara is to marry Dr. Rossi. Chiara wants a country wedding at Valsassina. The Count seeks out his nephew, Cesare, who lives on the estate. Another family holding, the Villa Ricordanza, had been requisitioned three times during the war. Chiara was cooped up there in her childhood.

Chiara calls Maddalena Aunt Mad. Salvatore Rossi is a physician, a neurologist. Chiara Ridolfi is accused by an English school friend of being weedy. Her friend from the convent, Barney, visits Chiara. Giancarlo regrets that Maddalena is not present during the visit. Barney worries about the supply of bath water in Florence. Giancarlo claims he isn't used to the straightforwardness of Barney. Chiara doesn't like having Salvatore Rossi inspected by her.

The incidents of the story roll on from one interesting locution (and location) and another and another. What a wonderful title, INNOCENCE, is for the book that Penelope Fritzgerald gives us. The author's writing shows deep cultural acquisitions employed in a number of remarkable ways. (There is some resemblance here to the works of E.M. Forster.) The result is sunshine, happiness, joy. The too often used adjective sparkling really does describe the quality encountered in the novel. The clash of Italian and English customs is brilliant, bright, amusing.

I have read four other books by this author and would place this one at the top of the list in terms of over-all excellence and reader interest.