Innocence

by Penelope Fitzgerald

A new edition of the Booker Prize winner Penelope Fitzgerald’s best-loved novel of romance in post-war Italy, with a new introduction by Julian Barnes.
Innocence is set in the 1950s, when Italy was picking up the pieces after the war. Chiara Ridolfi is the guileless daughter of a decrepit Italian family. Barney is her practical English girlfriend, who can sum up a man, she says, in one firm hand-grip. Salvatore is a penniless doctor from the south, who thinks he is proof against politics, social conscience and tenderness. Chiara’s cousin, Cesare, says very little, which gives him time to think…

Genres: Fiction, Italy, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Historical, British Literature, Novels

340 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

Penelope Mary Fitzgerald was a Booker Prize-winning novelist, poet, essayist and biographer from Lincoln, England. In 2008 The Times listed her among "the 50 greatest British writers since 1945". The Observer in 2012 placed her final novel, The Blue Flower, among "the ten best historical novels". A.S. Byatt called her, "Jane Austen’s nearest heir for precision and invention."

Reviews

[Fionnuala]

While I was reading this book, I found myself thinking about the various meanings of the word 'contrary'.
In Salvatore Rossi, Penelope Fitzgerald created a very contrary main character. He makes a life's work out of differing from everyone about everything. He moves away from his home in the impoverished south of Italy because his mother wants him to stay, he avoids politics because his father was a committed activist, he refuses to marry because it is expected of him, and when he eventually falls in love, it is only because Chiara, who hails from an aristocratic family, which would normally mean he'd resent her on sight, seems capable of being as contrary as himself.

Salvatore is also the embodiment of contrary. Everybody and everything annoys him, most especially the people who somehow make his contrary choices into acceptable ones by forgiving his contrariness, approving his capriciousness, and serving up on a plate solutions to his difficulties. That they do all this with seeming innocence, irritates him further. Every time someone does him a good turn, it wounds him, he is so bitter.

I have to admit that I was guilty of a bit of contrariness myself when I started reading this book. The four Fitzgerald novels I'd read so far had all been set in locations in England the author knew well from having worked or lived in them: a barge, a bookshop, a radio station, a theatre school. But this book, with its Italian location, and an opening episode set in the 1500s, made me perversely expect to be disappointed. The author will sound too much like an English woman, I thought. She won't convince me that her Italian characters and settings are real. As I read on, and the narrative moved from Florence in the 1550s to Florence in the 1950s, I revised my thinking, and to such an extent that there were moments when I forgot I was reading a novel in English! Penelope Fitzgerald more than convinced me that her characters were real and that her locations existed. A little casual detail about how Chiara, for example, had grown up viewing the paintings in the family home at first from below, and then, as she grew taller, seeing more and more in them, seemed just right. Of course, I thought! Italians must surely be steeped in art the way English people are steeped in...tea! And when Chiara goes to England, life there is definitely described as if it were being viewed by Italian eyes: the cosseting of the windows in voluminous curtains, the beds submerged beneath under-blankets, blankets and blanket-covers, the crockery, the rockery, the immovable hall table on which lay blue-skied postcards (from sunnier lands).

But the thing that impressed me the most was the connection that was very subtly made between the beginning story set in the 1500s and Salvatore's story. As usual with Fitzgerald's novels, I had to peer hard to see the connection, but once I did, it was as clear as an Italian sky. In both stories, there is an aristocrat bound up in a close connection with a person from a peasant background. And in both stories, innocence, continually seeking to do good, succeeds instead in wounding the object of its generous intentions.

[Violet wells · Rating 4 out of 5]

All the Penelope Fitzgerald novels I've read have been quirky but this is probably the most quirky of all. It's about an Italian marriage between an aristocratic girl and a low-born neurologist from rural southern Italy. Chiara descends from a family of midgets and the first chapter, a masterpiece of surrealism, takes us back to Renaissance Tuscany when the family go to extreme lengths to protect their beloved daughter from the knowledge of her genetic anomaly: she's not allowed to leave the estate and everyone employed there is also a midget. Unfortunately, the daughter's companion begins to grow and a macabre solution is found. This story becomes the lynchpin of the family mythology. They are no longer midgets but they are rashly eccentric and this eccentricity always has a stamp of innocence.

Of greatest interest to me was her depiction of Florence and Tuscany which was excellent. I'm not sure how much time she spent there but her knowledge and understanding of the place that has been my home most of my life was that of an insider. In fact, the one English character in the novel is utterly convincing as the foreigner so richly and authentically has she evoked Italian society.

In his brilliant introduction Julien Barnes calls this a novel about the law of unintended consequences; about the bad outcomes that arise out of good intentions. I can't come up with a better description. Characters are relentlessly misunderstanding each other, especially when love is at stake. Chiara and her fiancé/husband do nothing, in fact, but argue - a distinctly refreshing take on romantic love. I also detected a strong Elizabeth Bowen influence working through this novel. The idea of innocence as an active disrupting force rather than its more conventional guise as a passive victimised quality - Chiara's reckless driving mirrors Emmaline's in To the North. I also enjoyed the fluid timelines, which include a couple of very mischievous allusions to a future long after the novel's time parameters are over. I very much doubt if this is anyone in the world's favourite novel of all time but it was, as usual with Fitzgerald, a thoroughly entertaining and fabulously constructed read. Also enjoyed Barnes' dig at the Booker judges, four women and one man, who gave the prize to Kingsley Amis' The Old Devils. Barnes comments: "Amis' last decade was one of sour and narrowing decline and loosening syntax; Fitzgerald's last decade was one of artistic reinvention, heightened ambition, and a constant, generous yet amused interest in the world."
4+ stars.

[Kalliope · Rating 4 out of 5]

SIZE--or SIZING--MATTERS.

This was a peculiar reading.

I was immediately and engagingly drawn in. But how could I not be, an art buff, given that it starts in the Florence of the 16C in the fictional villa La Ricordanza, but with a direct reference to a non-fictional villa, the Valmarana ai Nani in the vicinity of Vicenza, and which still looms in my memories with all its pastel coloured frescoes? The house of dwarfs.

Sizes in the Ricordanza have somewhat increased, and distortions smoothed out, since the family who lived in the Florentine villa, we are explained, was one of midgets. Midgets, in difference to dwarfs, are smaller than standard but keep proportions regular.

After such an engaging but unexpectedly cruel beginning the novel jumps to the Florence of the 1950s, and the plot develops when the midgets have gained their full size along their centuries. And this it does under the shadow of Antonio Gramsci’s ghost in the grey tones of an old film. My reading then lapsed into a different beat, since neither the story nor the characters captivated me as much as my memories of a villa peopled by Tiepolo’s figures.

But there was a pulling drive and it came from the writing style. With a tongue-in-cheek tone, well suited to her young assertive and defiant characters, Fitzgerald expands her theme of the inevitably decaying nobility amongst inevitably decaying communism—and the dangers of a state of innocence. When good intentions amputate unwanted reality to fit them into our dreams or set of prejudiced conventions, innocence will no longer appear rosy but take on the shrill tone of calamity.

Innocence sized to its corresponding dimensions.

Humour nonetheless is also there. The comparisons between the Italian and English worlds are amusing. If it is innate to the English not to fudge around with the making of tea, it is for the Italians to know the difference, without blinking, between a Botticelli and a Pietro di Cortona.

This edition came with an excellent Preface by Hermione Lee, Fitzgerald’s biographer, setting her up in context, and a brilliant Introduction by Julian Barnes. Don’t miss these.

[Jean-Luke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Surely one of the most delightful books in existence. The literary equivalent of a Lasse Hallström film--What's Eating Gilbert Grape, The Cider House Rules, The Hundred-Foot Journey--all coincidentally based on books. The humor is gentle rather than zany, as in some of her work, and you are left feeling like you've just sat through Notting Hill, though I have a friend who hates Notting Hill and this would totally put her off reading this book. Don't be like that friend, even if I'm just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her makes you roll your eyes. I wouldn't call it a rom-com though, as the scope is a bit broader. There is a bit of an Up at the Villa feel to it, more so than A Room with a View, especially with the bit of drama near the end. I haven't quite read all of Fitzgerald's books, but I don't see how she could have written anything more wonderful.

[Jess ❈Harbinger of Blood-Soaked Rainbows❈ · Rating 1 out of 5]

F is for Fitzgerald


This novel was horrible. And I thought maybe it was a case of "it's not you, its me." But no. It's the book. It's definitely the book. Not my cuppa at all, and honestly, I can't think of a single friend of mine who would like the book either.

I have no idea how to even write a review for this because I can't even say what it's about. The characters were completely one-dimensional, the writing was seriously odd and alienating, and I didn't understand anything about it. At first it reminded me of Jane Austen set in post-WWII Florence, but Jane's novels were full of wit and satire and lovely characters whose love unfolded slowly and perfectly. These characters and their stories were just a big hot mess. And not in a good way.

The main focus of the book was the Ridolfi family, a noble family with a beautifully large estate and vineyard but who had no money. The 18 year old Ridolfi daughter Chiara met a doctor 12 years her senior at a party, and the two of them fell into the worst case of instalove I've ever seen. Particularly because they aren't in love. I have absolutely no idea why they are in love, why they are together, what they see in each other, or anything else because I couldn't tell you a single thing about them other than they think they are in love with each other. Well, spoiler alert, they get married and make each other even more miserable. Basically they fight all the time and then they have sex. Things happen. I don't know what else to say. I don't think I've ever read a more boring book in my life. It was only 224 pages and it took me three friggin weeks to read!

Of course, Salvatore couldn't practice as a neurologist without being, for the most part, calm and sensible, it was just that until today she hadn't had any experience of it. Now she had a problem, as it hadn't occurred to her that she could love him any more than she did, but to take in this new aspect of him her love would have to expand, and show that it had expanded.

WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN?

Some chapters are 10 pages, some are 5 sentences. I had no idea how or why the book was organized this way. There was also a "Part 1" and Part 2" but Part 2 picked up exactly where Part 1 left off and nothing happened differently. The passages were odd.

"They walked together for a little, arm in arm. They were talking about tier bowel movements. Loyalty from that quarter was the one thing necessary, said Ricasoli, for absolute peace of mind."

This book has been called "a comedy of errors" or a "comedy of manners" but there was absolutely no comedy in sight. The only redeeming qualities were the sparse but beautiful descriptions of the Italian countryside, and the few and too far between mentions of delicious sounding Italian food. That's it. I hated this author's writing style with a passion. It tried way too hard to be clever and witty, but what it did was make it absolutely impossible to understand what was going on. When the two main characters got engaged, I totally missed it. It wasn't until 10 or so pages after it happened that I even realized it did. And then, I re-read those pages to see what I had missed and still couldn't find the passage where they get engaged. WTF? I very very very nearly made an exception to my "never DNF" rule for this one because I just didn't care. Blah. Blah. Blah. Thank you book for putting me off reading. I will never read anything else by this author. And the ending? Seriously? I don't even know what happened. It's like the author died in the middle of a chapter and just stopped writing. But ultimately,

[Issicratea · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first novel by Penelope Fitzgerald I have read, but I’m sure that it won’t be the last. She’s quite distinctive and appealing, even on this slight acquaintance: wry, ironic, light of touch, capable of the unexpected, refreshingly prepared to leave ends untied.

One odd thing about reading Fitzgerald is that her writing has a built-in sense of anachronism (if this novel is anything to go by). She was born in 1916, hardly more than a decade after writers like Evelyn Waugh and Nancy Mitford, with both of whom her style and tone has some affinities; yet she started writing famously late, in the mid to late 1970s, when she was in her early 60s. Her first novel, The Golden Child, was published in 1977, a year before Ian McEwan’s The Cement Garden, yet she reads like someone from a completely different age.

Innocence is set in the 1950s in Florence and it captures an interesting moment in the twentieth-century history of Italy. The treatment of Italy’s communist legacy and what it might mean in the country’s uneasy post-war settlement is especially well handled. It is given emotional depth through a remembered episode, set twenty years before the main time frame of the novel, in which one of the main characters is taken by his father to visit Antonio Gramsci in a high-security hospital at the very end of his life, in a state of advanced physical decay due to the effects of tuberculosis, almost rotting away while still alive. This is a scene of great power, both poignant and disturbing, posited quite believably as a defining episode in a ten-year-old boy’s life.

There’s a lot that rings true in Fitzgerald’s picture of Florence in these years. Most of the main characters are from a down-on-its-luck Florentine aristocratic family, the Ridolfi, but the social range of the cast-list is broader than I initially feared it was going to be. We spend a fair amount of time with two upwardly mobile doctors, immigrants from the South, one the boy of the Gramsci visit. There are glimpses, as well, of hapless British ex-pats trying to live the Tuscan dream, a seamstress in her one-room apartment, and the workshop of a grand, wizened old couturier (modeled on Fortuny, according to Hermione Lee.)

Throughout, there is a species of tragicomic chorus constituted by reported gossip and public opinion. Nothing happens within families or to individuals without it being widely—and disapprovingly—commented on by “society.” This is very (old-school) Italian and very well observed, as are Florentine reactions to the female protagonist’s hearty, forthright English convent-school friend Barney, as remote from 1950s Italian ideals of femininity as a yak. People constantly refer to Barney in the novel as a “giantess,” a nice formal echo of the perverse tale of a seventeenth-century female dwarf ancestress of the Ridolfi we hear about in a prefatory episode and that makes various ironic returns in the course of the narrative. Details like this lend a certain playfulness to Fitzgerald’s novel. It’s a brisk and pleasurable read on the surface, though with sudden and quite vertiginous depths.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

“A serious thinking adult has no defence against innocence because he was obliged to respect it, whereas the innocent scarcely knows what respect is, or seriousness either.” (P. 205)

In the sixteenth century, the Ridolfi, owners of the villa La Ricordanza, had stone statues adorning the walls, known as “Dwarfs.” The Ridolfi were a family of midgets, shorter than 1.3 metres. They hired workers and staff so their daughter Gemma only knew the world of small. They tried to keep her innocent. In the dark.

In the 1950’s, this same family had land, title but little money. The count’s daughter, Chiara, having left the convent school, desired to marry a local neurologist, Salvatore Rossi. She was 18, quite innocent but knew what she wanted.

Salvatore is an odd case. His father once took him to visit his old political colleague, dying in hospital after years in prison. The incident marked the boy. He was eight. He decided to become a doctor but vowed never to get into politics; nor rely on anyone emotionally. He just wanted respect.

Italy after the war had a broken people and wanting a new start. Neurology was new and his reputation as a “good doctor” was getting around. Sadly the a Italian government paid their doctors very little. He just wanted something more to call home.

The doctor was from the south, where he had some family land. This was his only connection to his past. He sold it to get married. Chiara certainly knew what she wanted; very persuasive!

So was she innocent? Maybe. The doctor? Perhaps. The count’s family? The peculiar aunt, who ran a rather questionable charity; the cousin who took care of the family farm and answered with very few words. Chiara’s English friend, Barney? Eccentric, yes.

In the 1950s the state came up with a great idea. They had all these aging and poorly maintained estates but the newly established tourism industry was about to take hold. Tourism? The Italian people? All possible candidates for innocence.

Penelope Fitzgerald pieced all of these issues together, masterfully creating a captivating story. I admit, as I read, things just seemed to happen, almost in such a delightful and perhaps, haphazard way, that the story just creeped up behind me. It was a total delight.

I must give full credit and thanks to Fionnuala for her review that opened my eyes to this writer.

I leave with this bewildering quote, “Good sense is dead, its child, Science, killed it one day to find out how it was made.” p. 308

[Kirsty · Rating 4 out of 5]

I sadly only have a couple of the wonderful Penelope Fitzgerald's novels left to read, and a few of her non-fiction books. I purchased Innocence (1986) several months ago, but chose to leave it on my to-read shelf as a special treat to snuggle down with, rather than immediately rushing into it and then having to wait an age to find her outstanding titles. I was moderately disappointed by Fitzgerald's Booker Prize-winning Offshore, but have very much enjoyed the rest of her books to date.

A.S. Byatt calls Innocence 'exquisite', and The Guardian deems it 'Delightful... a bubbling and beautiful book.' The novel begins in 1955 in Florence, and follows the once-moneyed Ridolfi family who, 'like its decrepit villa and farm, has seen better days.' The character whom Fitzgerald has placed most focus upon is the eighteen-year-old Ridolfi daughter, Chiara. Her vitality is 'matched by innocence - a dangerous combination.'

Chiara has fallen head-over-heels for Salvatore Rossi, 'a young doctor who resolved long ago to be emotionally dependent on no one.' Chiara, frustrated by her own progress in the matter, has to ask one of her English friends from the convent school which she attends to help her set them up. 'And so,' writes Fitzgerald, 'ensues a comedy of manners, in which lovers, with the best of intentions and the kindest of instincts, succeed in making one another astonishingly miserable...'. Indeed, the novel feels Shakespearean in its scope, and in the witty asides made at times.

Fitzgerald makes us aware of Chiara's limitations when at home: 'Chiara Ridolfi was a beauty, but not thought beautiful in Florence. Her American mother's family had once been Scottish, her looks were northern, her delicate high colouring was suited not to a fierce climate but to the mild damp and mist of the north. Only the lids of her blue eyes were Florentine, round and languid... her half eager, half diffident approach to whatever came along hadn't the ruthlessness of the ancient money-making city which in its former days had questioned the bills of the world's greatest artists...'. In this manner, Fitzgerald intertwines the history of the Ridolfi family, as well as the Florentine people, with the present-day stories of Chiara and her father, Giancarlo.

Fitzgerald is highly informed about Italian culture, and the differences between separate regions; this knowledge translates marvellously to the page, and makes each setting all the more vivid. There is also a focus upon the minutiae of life, and the use of colour and sense are particularly striking throughout. Fabric comes in shades of 'tender grey', the sky is a 'darkish olive-green', and the air is 'damp and caressing'. Of the Ricordanza, the secluded house in which the Ridolfis live, Fitzgerald writes: 'The ground floor was used for storage and was lit only by two round windows. This raising up of the front door made the whole house look unwelcoming and inaccessible. The lemon trees in their terracotta jars, each balanced on an empty one turned upside down, dispensed their bitter green smell: their dark green leaves were startlingly fresh against the blank, bleached, cracked and faded house.'

As with her other novels, I found Innocence both shrewd and immersive. Fitzgerald's writing is as finely crafted as it is highly distinctive; there is a playful sharpness to it. Full of wisdom, humour, and measured reasoning, Innocenceis a wonderfully mesmeric read.

[Laura McNeal · Rating 5 out of 5]

There may be moments when you'll be tired. I mean the kind of tired you get in a museum filled with masterpieces, and it's been five hours already and your feet hurt, as does that place in the small of your back, and you start thinking, "Oh, no, not Judith with the head of Holofernes again." You may also be afflicted, when you're reading the middle third of this book, with the kind of tired you feel when you're reading Tolstoy and you can't remember 8 out of ten characters in all their particulars (what they did in the last scene, to whom they are related, whether the nickname is in any way derived from all the other names and titles this character has been given elsewhere in the book, and is it possible that maybe you're not smart enough to read this book? you may wonder--not least because you don't speak the language or belong to the country that provided the names and social customs of the characters). But if you feel that kind of fatigue and doubt, I urge you to read on. It all comes together in the last third with an air of magisterial completeness such as you might see in a huge and complicated cathedral. It's a thing of mysterious beauty, this book, a painting you could study again and again and still find something that makes you want to sit gratefully down on the bench, that padded one in the center of the gallery, and lose yourself in contemplation and awe.

[SilveryTongue · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 estrellas

Bellamente escrito.

En esta novela Penelope Fitzgerald es "la dama del indicio de lo sublime".

[Roberta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Come questa (https://www.nytimes.com/books/97/09/0...) recensione del NYTimes ha brillantemente riassunto, the predominant mood of the closing pages could reasonably be called Chekhovian - a mixture of the sad, the hopeful and the absurd. Queste tre caratteristiche descrivono bene il romanzo: la tristezza nei rapporti (spesso inespressi) tra le persone, la speranza di riuscire a trovare un compromesso, l'assurdo di questi Ridolfi che si ostinano a fare delle grandi baggianate a fin di bene e ad essere totalmente fuori dal mondo (parlando di Chiara e Salvatore, la voce narrante spiega che Chiara, come tutti i Ridolfi, era talmente aliena alla gelosia da non riuscire nemmeno ad immaginare, o a capire, che qualcun'altro potesse soffrirne, con tutte le conseguenze del caso), di Salvatore che si dichiara uomo che ha imparato fin da piccolo a non essere emotivo ed è, al contrario, una bomba in costante esplosione, collerico come pochi, e della leggenda assurdissima e quasi splatter legata alla proprietà di famiglia dei Ridolfi, la Ricordanza.
A queste caratteristiche io aggiungerei anche l'ironia, sottile ma gustosa, che pervade tutta la narrazione.

Ma partiamo dal principio: Innocence è ambientato nell'Italia degli anni Cinquanta, dove Chiara, rampolla di una famiglia toscana nobiliare ma squattrinata (un tema fondamentale della letteratura inglese) si innamora di Salvatore, un self made man del sud, di umili origini ma divenuto dottore a Firenze. I due sono appunto due innocenti: Chiara perché è giovane, e perché le mancano alcune delle malizie umane che non sono positive ma essenziali per convivere con gli altri (ad esempio il riconoscimento del sentimento della gelosia); Salvatore perché, nella sua furia di evitare un destino lacrimevole e deforme, apparentemente preannunciato da una memorabile visita compiuta da ragazzino, con il padre, a Gramsci, taglia tutti i ponti con la sua famiglia e con il suo retaggio, soffrendone ma non rendendosene conto.

Anche i personaggi minori sono meravigliosi: basti pensare all'amica inglese Barney e ai suoi assurdi innamoramenti, al cugino Cesare silenzioso e tranquillo, al padre che ha attraversato un'intera vita senza imparare nulla di utile ed è l'emblema dell'amorevole inefficienza, alla zia matta (bello che in inglese la zia, di nome Maddalena, venga chiamata Aunt Mad) che poi è quella meno matta di tutti e a molti altri.

Consigliatissimo, si trova anche in traduzione italiana con il titolo Innocenza (Sellerio).

[Colin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Penelope Fitzgerald weaves her unique magic for the last time for me as getting to the end of Innocence means that I've now read all of her novels and short stories. Fortunately there are still some biographies in store, but what I love about her writing is her multifaceted approach to storytelling, the incidental glances by which she develops her characters and the seemingly accidental accretion of detail that somehow ends up creating a rich and satisfying plot. Not to mention her wicked humour. I'm assuming that her non-fiction writing won't display those tricks and traits; perhaps it will, as Fitzgerald is frequently innovative and always surprising.
Innocence is a story of a prickly romance and its impact on a fallen-on-hard-times aristocratic family in post-war Italy. It's a fairly short book, but Fitzgerald's style makes the reader take it slowly, relishing the fine details, the sly humour and the richly described setting. Innocence isn't my favourite Fitzgerald (that's probably The Gate of Angels), but is a wonderful read nonetheless.

[Carolyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perfection is far easier to recognise than to explain, to analyse in its component parts. Even one of this novel's themes, innocence itself, is developed and expanded upon in so many subtle ways. The author's quiet, almost sublime use of language and tone, is unparalleled. The characters arise, almost organically, from their setting.

I was so enthralled by this novel that I devoured it in one sitting. It is a work that deserves to be read at a slower, more thoughtful pace, so I should re-read it before writing a more analytical review. But this book is a masterpiece, right up there with the works of Jane Austen and some of the Russians, and I commend it to any mature and thoughtful reader.

To paraphrase Wordsworth:

"Dull would he be of soul, who could pass by
A book so touching in its majesty."

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

A surprisingly very Italian novel that had me wondering where it was going right to the last page. Ms. Fitzgerald has a knack for creating flawed but, for the most part, endearing main characters in her work. In "Innocence" this applies to just about all of the secondary characters as well. In fact, as the novel progressed I grew to embrace most of these secondary characters who with their faults, eccentricities and intentions added warmth and humor to the story. Recommended for fans of Ms. Fitzgerald, although I would not recommend it as an introduction to this author. I would suggest either "The Bookshop" or "Offshore" to readers who want to give her a try.

[Pitichi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Firenze, 1955. I Ridolfi, conti in declino, proprietari di un appartamento in via Limbo e di una villa leggendaria, la Ricordanza, conducono la loro esistenza tra le abitudini nobiliari - viaggi, scuole prestigiose, amore per l'arte - e preoccupazioni terrene - soldi, amicizie influenti, insolite imprese.
Giancarlo, il capofamiglia, osserva la sorella Maddalena, al limite della follia, la figlia Chiara, pallida e inconsistente, il nipote Cesare, solitario e ormai caricatura di sé stesso.
La nobilità decaduta, impolverata e in rovina è al centro del romanzo della Fitzgerald. Interessantissimo il contesto in cui questa è inserita: l'Italia nel decennio dopo la fine della Seconda Guerra Mondiale, che si rialza ma è ancora sconvolta, che prova a ripartire, ma è ancora legata al passato. Emblematiche le parole che l'autrice mette in bocca a Salvatore: "Ormai siamo alla metà degli anni cinquanta, la guerra è finita da più di un decennio. È venuto il momento di cominciare a accettare, nel bene o nel male, i cambiamenti che ci sono stati imposti".
E, allo stesso modo, anche i personaggi si adeguano, loro malgrado, ai cambiamenti, pur restando immutabili nel loro carattere.
La prima parte del romanzo di questa straordinaria Penelope Firzgerald è incentrata sul fulmineo innamoramento di Chiara e Salvatore Rossi, dottore del Sant'Agostino, originario della lontana Mazzata.
Questo innamoramento viene raccontato da diverse sfaccettature, attraverso episodi e sensazioni dei personaggi, anche minori, che lo incontrano. Un concerto di voci e pensieri, un montaggio opera di un narratore onnisciente, osservatore indiscreto di vizi e virtù dei personaggi.
La seconda parte narra, invece, il matrimonio e la movimentata vita coniugale di Salvatore e Chiara: incomprensioni, amore totale, felicità e dolore.
Un romanzo completo, pulsante e meraviglioso, che resta nel cuore.
Standing ovation per il personaggio di Lavina "Barney" Barnes, l'assurda amica inglese di Chiara, incontenibile e sanguigna, che agita le acque. Bravissima Penelope!

[JacquiWine · Rating 4 out of 5]

A few weeks ago, I posted a piece about Natalia Ginzburg’s Happiness, As Such, a novella about love, happiness and the messy business of family relationships in 20th-century Italy. Innocence – the sixth novel by the British writer Penelope Fitzgerald – taps into similar themes, set as it is in Florence in the mid-1950s. It’s a captivating book – exquisitely written, as one might expect from this most graceful of writers.

Central to the novel is Chiara, the eighteen-year-old daughter of Giancarlo, the head of the once-wealthy Ridolfi family. However, before we dive too far into Chiara’s story, Fitzgerald takes us back in time to the middle of the sixteenth century when all the Ridolfis were midgets as a consequence of a particular genetic condition. At the time, the family go to great lengths to protect their youngest daughter from the knowledge that she might be ‘different’ from other girls by surrounding her with other, similarly-sized individuals. They hire a companion for the girl – a dwarf named Gemma. But when Gemma experiences a sudden spurt of growth, the Ridolfi daughter pities her, viewing her size as a freakish abnormality. As a consequence, she devises a well-intentioned plan to ‘correct’ her companion’s size, one that results in grisly consequences for young Gemma herself…

The moral of this fable is concerned with the inadvertent consequences of our actions – the fact that sometimes, despite our best intentions, we actually end up hurting someone when we had intended to do good.

Moving forward to 1955, the Ridolfis are no longer midgets, the genetic condition having dissipated over the years; however, they do retain a degree of eccentricity, a quality that sometimes manifests itself as naivete, hence the nod to the opening parable.

18yo Chiara has fallen for Salvatore, a Neurologist who hails from a poor family in the south. At thirtyish, Salvatore is considerably older than Chiara, and also quite different in terms of social class and personality. While Salvatore is somewhat prickly and intemperate, Chiara is changeable and alert, demonstrating an intriguing mix of eagerness and diffidence. It’s a somewhat misguided match, something that Salvatore reflects on when he recalls their initial encounter at a concert.

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[Kasia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mama knows best! My mother's been on Ms. Fitzgerald for a while now and I had yet to jump on the bandwagon...until last night. I should have known - her choices are always golden! She reads incessently and with taste. I always thought she should eventually do a PhD in English Literature or perhaps pull a Fitzgerald and start her writing career at the age of 60.
Anyways, she's the only one whose recommendations actually I take to heart.
I think she got her love of books from my grandfather. He never finished High School, but has always been an avid reader and is able to discern a quality read when he randomly comes across one. He has horrible eyesight now, at the age of 93, and can only read large print books. He sifts through thrillers and New York Times bestsellers and the like to stumble upon gems like MFK Fischer and Alice Munro.
About two weeks ago he was talking to my mother about the great little book he was currently reading - "a book, not really a novel, but a string of stories, by this woman...ummm...Alice something or other...Alice Munro. Jini do you know Alice Munro?"
He knows a good book when he reads one. And he was the person that introduced my entire family to the lovely books of MFK Fischer. He's a surprising man, that grandfather of mine.

[Ali · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a difficult book to get a handle on in many ways. I did enjoy it, although I didn't enjoy it as much as I wanted to, or as much as I did the Golden Child - which was the last Penelope Fitzgerald I read. I'm not sure what her "point" would be if there was one. I can't believe that it's just a story about a crumbling Italian family, with their bizarre history of dwarfism and mutilation, nor about a pair of rather ill matched lovers. Penelope Fitzgerald feels like one of those authors that must be making some point - and that the story is just a means to it - with this novel I don't know what that point is. One review I read suggets that it is that life seldom turns out as you might expect - hmm not sure that isn't too simple. The characters, I found, were difficult to care about - in fact I'm not sure I did at all - with the exception of Barney the marvelous English friend, the characters are a bit flat - which added to my feeling that they were merely showing us (the reader) something more. But what ever that might be I obviously didn't get it. I was relieved to see - by looking at Amazon that i am not the only one who hasn't "got it" which makes me feel a bit better.

[Nimbex · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mucho de lo que dije en su día sobre El inicio de la primavera podría repetirlo en este caso, aunque al final Inocencia ha terminado gustándome y enganchándome más. Definitivamente los libros de Penelope Fitzgerald son peculiares, en éste en concreto no hay un solo personaje que actúe de manera razonable y la mayoría de lo que acontece puede calificarse de surrealista. Sin embargo al final he podido encontrar algo de lógica entre tanta locura y darle un poco de sentido a las acciones de los personajes, será que le estoy cogiendo el gusto al estilo de la autora.

[Trina · Rating 5 out of 5]

I adored this sly novel set in Florence in the 50s. I'd call it a "snarky Jane Austen" comedy of manners. A hapless Anglo-Italian girl from a destitute but ancient aristocratic family in Florence and a fiery outspoken doctor from dirt-poor Campania fall impetuously, hopelessly in love. Everybody in both families is a character. Absolutely charming without being one bit corny.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

****1/2

As always, Fitzgerald's sneakily brilliant with her structure. Witty, too, and such a master of insinuation and understatement. This time it's the miscommunications and foibles of love in 1950s Italy between an 18-year-old woman and a nearly 30-year-old doctor (who yet has not quite managed any sort of maturity or flexibility in his dealings with the rest of the world). The central couple is fun, but it's the cast of characters around them, much more, that bring most of the joy: stoic cousin Cesare tending his vineyard and enduring various invasions, father Giancarlo the old friend of Gramsci, Aunt Mad's always awry schemes, gentle colleague and friend Dr Gentilini... Fitzgerald sketches them with such concision and warmth, but retains (as always) her eye for human failing.

Funny, clever, compassionate work. Read Penelope!

[sandraenalaska · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mucho, es mucho más que lo que cuenta el resumen del libro, y mejor. Es una novela sobre la libertad individual, ahí es nada, en forma de tragicomedia. Dicen que se parece a las comedias de Shakespeare, a mí me hace pensar en Chesterton. Es una invitación a leer a Gramsci y a volver a las filosofías que perseguían el bien común. Y además, te ríes porque muy pronto adivinas que esos personajes excéntricos te están tomando el pelo.

[Lara Abrahams · Rating 2 out of 5]

Everything about this book appeared to be awfully disconnected. I still enjoyed it though, the atmosphere was quirky and warm. But the characters felt like rusty toys lacking of purpose. I was let in a number of different feelings and parallel story lines without ever getting a glimpse of how these might come together in one. Or maybe it's my fault and I should have paid more attention. Oh well.

[Eolann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reread this; it's my first time going back to Fitzgerald in a long while, but I think she might (still) be the closest thing I have to a favourite writer. She's able to execute all the traditional, "readable" stylistic pleasures available to a conventional mid-20th century British novelist, and at the same time brings her own oblique, uncanny perspective to the narrative in a way that feels strikingly original and quietly avant-garde; what one reviewer in Fitzgerald's lifetime described as her "strange, muted power and intelligence...I kept on asking myself, How is it done?”

[Dagný · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading Innocence, or any of Penelope Fitzgerald’s books, I really don’t want to leave her sentences. I linger longer than I normally would before yielding to the irresistible pull of the promised, to see what might happen next. Many works of fiction might wield this power over us, but when the book closes the enchantment might end. Fitzgerald's books I keep on loving.

Penelope Fitzgerald was born in England in 1916, a bishop’s granddaughter and whose parents and uncles were known writers and intellectuals. She was Oxford educated. In spite of her illustrious family background and elite education she lived a hardscrabble life in a difficult marriage and did not begin her literary career until she was close to 60 years old. She wrote, first biographies then novels, for twenty years, and died at 83. Five years before her death she completed The Blue Flower, a book many consider among the best books written in the English language.

Of Fitzgerald’s nine novels about half have a contemporary setting, as if drawn from her own life. Among these are The Bookshop and Offshore. She did indeed work in a bookstore at some point and also lived on a houseboat- that twice sank. The latter half of her novels are set in times past and far away places, such as she would not have known from personal experience. Beginning of Spring, for example, is set in Moscow, a place she had never been to, and takes place three years preceding her birth. The Blue Flower is set in 18th century Germany. Her historical novels feature fictional accounts of known personas set among purely fictional ones. Novalis, along with Goethe, are characters in The Blue Flower.

Innocence is set in Italy in the nineteen fifties, mostly, although it begins with a tale set in the 16th century, introducing the Tuscan family of impoverished nobles which features in the main story. Later, as a known person making an appearance, is Gramsci, the famous Marxist theorist, broken but strong. Innocence is a love story between a doctor, a neurologist, of a Southern Italy communist background and a daughter of the aforementioned nobles of yore. The surrounding characters, mostly Italians, some English, are no less important to the story. They are a contradictory lot: whacky and sensible, mysterious and understandable, pitiable and self-sufficient, all at once. They feel real, one laughs, one cares.

By the miracle of Fitzgerald’s writing her story metamorphoses into something organic, as if it arose from just that soil, just that time about those particular people. All the while, those unsentimental, elegant and swift sentences I love so much, they are uniquely hers.

[Kiely · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is really funny, in both the "ha-ha-humorous" and "excessively odd" definitions of the word. It took a little while for me to get into, because this isn't a book that you can just read while you're distracted with other things: you need to really pay attention to it in order to soak in the large cast of characters, little jokes and asides, and to understand what's really going on.
I truly did like this book, and its picture of Florence, the city I have now lived in for more than a combined year of my life and the Renaissance city I've studied in depth, during the 1950s after World War II. Almost all of the places and streets that Fitzgerald mentions are real, and it was fun to try to figure out where certain parts of the book take place in the city I know so well. Fitzgerald paints an incredibly convincing and accurate portrait of the Italian national character, as well as the stereotypes and prejudices between people of different regions of the country!
I really liked Barney as a character, who was quite silly and provided a bit of outsider comic relief; I also liked Cesare, and his incredibly blunt treatment of everything going on on the farm that was supposed to be his escape from everything, as well as Aunt Mad and her, well, quite mad idea to start an orphanage run by elderly women. Mostly I really liked Chiara, and her dreaded "innocence" that leads her to think the best of people, and do everything she can to help others, even if she is incredibly oblivious to the real situations and people around her at the same time. I didn't really like Salvatore as a character, although I DID love his continued insistence and conviction that everything in his life was designed to drive him crazy and aggravate him -- I feel like that too, a lot of the time!
Ultimately, though, this book was sweet and charming and so clever, full of asides and jokes and missing pieces of the puzzle that only come to light a hundred pages later. Mostly the book's message that life is weird, people are weird, and life in Italy is the weirdest, was much appreciated and relevant as I look back on my time living in the very same city Chiara and Salvatore call their home. Florence has changed abundantly yet not changed at all in the past sixty years, which is quite comforting indeed. I really enjoyed this sparkly, twisting, and complex little novel about some fascinating characters and the city I love.

[Richard Moss · Rating 5 out of 5]

Penelope Fitzgerald continues to dazzle me with her brilliance.

Innocence is the first of her four "late novels", although as she found literary success at such an advanced age, you could describe all her published fiction as "late".

Set in 1950s Italy, it has her trademark dry wit, her deeply human and flawed characters, elegant, effortless prose and that touch of strangeness that marks out her work.

It actually starts with a deeply strange fable-like tale with a dark undertone - an episode in the family history of the Ridolfis, who are at the centre of the novel. It's in part charming, but also bizarre and macabre.

At the heart of the book though are Chiara and Salvatore - a teenager and neurologist who marry after a whirlwind romance.

But nothing about this - or indeed any of Fitzgerald's fictions - is predictable and straightforward. The joy of reading her is you're never sure where it's heading. It can be unsettling, but exhilarating.

There are some wonderful characters. Chiara's English friend Barney made me laugh every time she appeared, but thanks to the author's skill, she's no comic caricature. Instead you are as moved by her as you are amused.

The "Innocence" referred to seems to be the guileless nature of many of the characters. They don't calculate or calibrate their lives, but that doesn't mean they are worse for it.

This is not a traditional love story either. Chiara and Salvatore have few tender moments - in fact they spend much of their time arguing. But the sexual tension is undeniable.

And neither is it a travelogue. You do get a semi-ruined Florentine villa, and a farm with a vineyard but you also get Salvatore's down-at-heel home town of Mazzata.

Fitzgerald doesn't do obvious, and like all her novels, you find yourself searching for meaning and theme. But that's the joy - she makes you think, and dig.

This is a wonderful book by an author at the peak of her powers.

[Bill Leigh · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Penelope Fitzgerald's writing, deceptively simple story telling but strangely thought provoking. The short first chapter of the novel is set in mid sixteenth century Florence at the Villa Ridolfi, but then it fast-forwards to mid 1950's Florence and there it stays. What always strikes me about Fitzgerald's 'historic' novels is that they feel completely authentic. The small bits of every-day historic detail make you feel that you really are in Italy, in Florence, in the 1950's, an Italy that is only just emerging from a ruinous war and where the South is still desperately poor. But this is not a political novel. It's a love story, or at least glimpse of one, where you are given less not more. A love story without sentimentality and a suggestion of a brutal past which might still cast a shadow. The title of the novel is "Innocence" and there is certainly an innocence about the 17 year old Contessa Chiara Ridolfi, but "Impulsive" might better describe her...

[Alice · Rating 5 out of 5]

Totally delightful book, possibly made more wonderful reading this book about Florence while in Italy. Charming, funny and whimsical. Have never read Fitzgerald before, but am looking forward to more.

After reading The Bookshop and Julian Barnes introduction to Innocence, I'm upgrading to five stars. The characters are wonderful, the writing amazingly Italian for an English author, and there is way more depth to the book than I thought at first.

[Travis Sherman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been following Fitzgerald around for a few weeks now. I've been Offshore the Chelsea Embankment with her in a dilapidated houseboat, Washday in 16th century Germany, running a printing press in Moscow before the revolution. She really gets around as Julian Barnes noted in his excellent review, How Did She Do It?

Innocence threw me for a loop at first, its setting in Italy very unfamiliar to me, especially since it opens up in 15th century Italy before moving up to just after WW II. Luckily, I had an excellent essay on hand in the Histories of Nations, which explained for me the dilemma of the Italian national character. The Catholic church and the disorganized Italian government "were constantly vying for supremacy, with no clear separation of tasks or hierarchies... Man's relationship with government was marked by weak institutions and by a culture of clemency, absolution and legal uncertainty... In Italy both the laws of the state and the moral teachings of religion are feeble."

Julian Barnes explains the theme of Innocence very well:

"Her fictional personnel are rarely vicious or deliberately evil; when things go wrong for them, or when they inflict harm on others, it is usually out of misplaced understanding, a lack less of sympathy than of imagination. The main problem is that they cannot see the terms and conditions which come attached to life: moral grace and social incompetence are often in close proximity. As Salvatore, the neurologist in her "Italian" novel Innocence, puts it, "There are dilettantes in human relationships just as there are, let's say, in politics." The aristocratic family into which he is to marry, the Ridolfis, have "a tendency to rash decisions, perhaps always intended to ensure other people's happiness". Such people tend to think that love in itself is sufficient, and that happiness might be its merited consequence. They speak their minds at the wrong time and in the wrong way; they deal in a kind of robustly harmful innocence. It is a quality shared equally between the sexes, but not mutually recognised."

Chiara, our young heroine, just out of the convent, is understandably an innocent. During a concert intermission, she falls immediately and openly in love with Salvatore. She seems a child. She is a child. We can see the possibility of her maturing as she has children. But Salvatore, a doctor, could equally be described as an innocent. He certainly speaks his mind at the wrong time and in the wrong way. We keep expecting more out of Salvatore. He is a dottore! In the end, we see and sympathize with the full extent of his childlike paranoia. He seems to lack a nine year olds basic theory of mind.

All in a funny way. Fitzgerald once asked her publisher, Colin Haycraft, "if it would be a good idea to write another novel." (This was after she had been shortlisted for the Booker for The Blue Flower.) "He jocundly replied that if she went on writing fiction he didn't want it blamed on him, and in any case he already had too many short novels with sad endings on his hands."

I delight in her clever, witty short novels, and I have yet to find one with a sad ending. Darkly funny, perhaps, but never sad.