Offshore, Human Voices, The Beginning of Spring (Everyman's Library) [Hardcover]

Penelope Fitzgerald (Author), John Bayley (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 23, 2003

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)

After publishing her first novel in 1977 at the age of sixty-one, Penelope Fitzgerald (1916-2000) went on to become one of the most remarkable and highly acclaimed English writers of the last century. Each of the three novels gathered here vividly and unforgettably conjures up an entire world.

The Booker Prize-winning novel Offshore limns the marginal existence of an eccentric assortment of barge dwellers on the Thames in the early 1960s, a group of misfits who are drawn to life on the muddy river in exile from the world of the landlocked. Human Voices takes us behind the scenes at the BBC during World War II, as world-weary directors and nubile young assistants attempt to save Britain’s heritage and keep Britons calm in the face of a feared German invasion. In The Beginning of Spring, a struggling English printer living in Moscow in 1913 is abandoned by his wife and left alone to care for his three young children in the face of the impending revolution.

Fitzgerald is a genius of the relevant detail and the deftly sketched context, and these narrative gems are marvels of compassion, wit, and piercing insight.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“[Offshore] is an astonishing book. Hardly more than 50,000 words, it is written with a manic economy that makes it seem even shorter, and with a tamped-down force that continually explodes in a series of exactly controlled detonations…A marvellous achievement: strong, supple, humane, ripe, generous, and graceful.” –The Times (London)

“[Human Voices is] a wonderful combination of deadpan English comedy and surreal farce.” –A. S. Byatt

“One of the pleasures of reading Penelope Fitzgerald is the unpredictability of her intelligence, which never loses its quality, but springs constant surprises.” –The Times (London)

“Awards are one thing, talent’s another, and Fitzgerald has it in spades. Warm and wry, her writing is as economical as it is perfect.” –Washington Post Book World

“[The Beginning of Spring] is one of the most skillful and utterly fascinating novels I have read for years. I cannot imagine any kind of educated reader who would not get a thrill from this gloriously peculiar book.” –Jan Morris, The Independent

“The Beginning of Spring is a comedy lit by writing so precise and lilting that it can make you shiver, and an elegy that nods at what passes without lamentation or indifference.” –Los Angeles Times

From the Inside Flap

After publishing her first novel in 1977 at the age of sixty-one, Penelope Fitzgerald (1916?2000) went on to become one of the most remarkable and highly acclaimed English writers of the last century. Each of the three novels gathered here vividly and unforgettably conjures up an entire world.

The Booker Prize?winning novel Offshore limns the marginal existance of an eccentric assortment of barge-dwellers on the Thames in the early 1960s, a group of misfits who are drawn to life on the muddy river in exile from the world of the landlocked. Human Voices takes us behind the scenes at the BBC during World War II, as world-weary directors and nubile young assistants attempt to save Britain?s heritage and keep Britons calm in the face of a feared German invasion. In The Beginning of Spring, a struggling English printer living in Moscow in 1913 is abandoned by his wife and left alone to care for his three young children in the face of the impending revolution. Fitzgerald is a genius of the relevant detail and the deftly sketched context, and these narrative gems are marvels of compassion, wit, and piercing insight.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 480 pages
• Publisher: Everyman's Library (September 23, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400041252
• ISBN-13: 978-1400041251
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #169,288 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars CURATOR OF VOICES, January 24, 2008

By 

John Stahle (New York City) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Offshore, Human Voices, The Beginning of Spring (Everyman's Library) (Hardcover)

Offshore, based on ten years spent living on a Thames houseboat that sank twice, did not work for me and I bailed by page 20. Its opening is chaotic and unfocused and the author fails to intimate that there is a story here worth following. The other two novels in this edition, however, are completely successful. We discern in her work the long shadow of Ivy Compton-Burnett, famous for acidic, bizarrely pointed dialogue, an inheritance Fitzgerald tempered with a tender respect for people on their own terms.

Human Voices, about working at the BBC during the war, is a fascinating and intricate series of interlocking stories, each serving to illuminate the others from a different angle. Fitzgerald is at her greatest here: she does not have the burden of artificially creating some past era, and her use of everyday trivia provides a richly textured tapestry of life and attitudes readers can connect with. The ending is perfect and perfectly Fitzgerald: tart, apt, sad, darkly comical, and more than slightly surreal.

The Beginning of Spring, concerning a British merchant family living in Moscow just before the Revolution, is simply marvelous. So much vivid detail, by turns minute or sweeping, put us right in the picture, yet, unlike Offshore, those details are firmly subsumed under a strong, affecting, and well-focused story. Satisfying, first-rate Fitzgerald.

Those who have not yet sampled this writer should start with the two Everyman's Library volumes, each offering three novels. The books are beautifully produced and comforting to hold, with good introductions and a chronology of the author's life.