Customer Reviews

3 Novels : The Blue Flower, The Bookshop, Offshore [Boxed Set]

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The world has lost a treasure in Penelope Fitzgerald, who died earlier this year at the age of 83. She had lived for so many years by the time she began writing (her first novel was published when she was 60) that she could see what was important and what wasn't, and she learned never to waste a word. So we have novels like The Bookshop, a powerful but pinched novel that stemmed a lot of its own force, and Offshore, an absolutely perfect work that said a lifetime's worth in only 140 pages.

The Bookshop, Fitzgerald's second novel, concerns Florence Green's struggle to open a bookshop in her small town, and the gentle opposition against the idea by the townspeople. There are great moments of truth and beauty, but often the Fitzgerald limits her own explorations, as if she put on blinders while writing. I love her economic style, how she says so much with so little, but in this case, she merely says "enough" with so little.

With Offshore, written the year after The Bookshop, Penelope Fitzgerald has truly opened up, creating a whole tucked-away world---the houseboats of the Thames River---we feel we've visited our entire lives. It's full of moments of little truths: the cab driver who kindly takes Nenna home, the children selling antique tiles to a curmudgeonly storekeeper, the thing that drives Richard's wife away---and what brings her back. I haven't had the pleasure of reading The Blue Flower, but I promise myself that it's next on my list.

Penelope Fitzgerald should be remembered for her word sculptures of characters as real as a family member. In the most concise manner, yet with startlingly vivid language, Fitzgerald takes us into the little worlds of neighbors and small towns. She draws her characters into tight fitting relationships as we really experience them. I found myself deeply engrossed in the lives of families living on the Thames in Offshore. Fitzgerald explores how we get "stuck" when changes around us overwhelm our ability to transform our lives for new conditions. In The Bookshop I resonated with a single woman who manages to start her own business only to have her dream subverted by a community's small mindedness and jealousy. I read these books because I am a writer. Studying with Penelope Fitsgerald as a reader is the best instruction in the business.

Excellent literature; highly recommended for character readers and for budding writers.

Susan Feathers Williams
writeforchange.com