The Mookse and the Gripes discussion

This topic has been created for those of you who are reading any of the Mookse Madness books by Penelope Fitzgerald.
These are the four books that have been selected.

The Bookshop
The Beginning of Spring
The Gate of Angels
The Blue Flower

I’ve read them all. I will confess that while I enjoyed them all, the brilliance of The Blue Flower escapes me. I can see why it’s so well received, but the reviews make me feel like I must have read the wrong The Blue Flower. My guess is those who loved Murmur will swoon for The Blue Flower.

I'm with you on The Blue Flower (even though I loved Murmur) - I very much prefer the other three.

I saw that you read my review, Hugh. It’s funny to see old reviews sometimes. I mentioned a woman in a Shelfari group I was in at the time because my reviews were targeted to people in the group. Now my reviews’ target audience is my future self.

I would like to reread Offshore after reading Everything Under, even though it’s not on our MM list.

Just finished The Beginning of Spring and here is my 2 star review. Needless to say but don’t think it will be my Fitzgerald pick!

This is the second book I have read by Penelope Fitzgerald (the first being The bookshop) and I am beginning to wonder if perhaps this Booker winning author just isn’t for me! The story takes place in Russia in 1913 and concerns an English businessman and his family living in Moscow. There are quite a few characters who actions and motivations seem strange and unbelievable.

I waited til I finished to read other reviews here on GR and was very relieved to find other readers who found Fitzgerald tough going! I have 2 more books by her to read before the Mookse Madness tournament (Gate of Angels and Blue Flower) and am anxious to see if her writing might be an acquired taste!

peg wrote: "Just finished The Beginning of Spring and here is my 2 star review. Needless to say but don’t think it will be my Fitzgerald pick!

This is the second book I have read by Penelope Fitzgerald (the f..."

I agree Peg. Penelope hasn't clicked for me either.

My guess is you might enjoy The Gate of Angels, but be mystified about the adulation for The Blue Flower. Whatever is outstanding about The Blue Flower went right over my head.

I feel compelled to defend Fitzgerald - she was unassuming and very versatile, but her main qualities were her observation and dry humour. I can't claim to have really understood the Blue Flower, but I suspect that this is at least partly because I knew very little about Novalis before reading it, and unlike many of her other books it is a long way from her own personal experience, and in some ways her most fully realised vision. Of these four, The Gate of Angels is probably the most enjoyable, though from what I remember I liked the Beginning of Spring too.

Thanks for your views Hugh! That is what I love about this forum....hearing learned views that may differ from my own. It confirms my suspicion that this author might be an acquired taste (for me) and I will be concentrating on those strengths that you mention as I plunge ahead into GATE OF ANGELS and BLUE FLOWER(which I will save til last!)

In retrospect, I wish I'd pointed out at the selection stage that this is the third time that The Bookshop has been a group read for M&G. Once on the old forum, once on the 1978 Booker retrospective, and again here. Another book should have had a chance. I'd have said Offshore, or Human Voices which sounded quite interesting going by another group's posts about it over the summer.

I recall enjoying The Bookshop, The Gate of Angels and The Beginning of Spring, Offshore seemed very odd to me, but after reading Everything Under about the people that lived on the river I would like to give Offshore another chance.

Hugh, I readily confess the fault is with me as a reader, not Ms Fitzgerald as a writer. I appreciate her spare style. Maybe that is my issue too, I know nothing about Novalis or the German Romantics.

I too thought of Offshore while reading Everything Under.

Great minds, Ang....

Fitzgerald gained my respect with The Bookshop and The Blue Flower. The Blue Flower will be a five star book IMO. I think one can handicap the enjoyment of The Blue Flower by worrying about how one's lack of background knowledge will inhibit the uderstanding the symbolic or philosophic meaning. The novel contains all you need to know or if you wish to enhance the enjoyment, you might read a few sections of Hymns to the Night afterwards.

Have now read Offshore, which I liked very much and wish I'd read years ago. Been looking at the rest of her novels and it's bad luck that the MM selection comprises just the ones which don't appeal to me, when Offshore, Human Voices, At Freddie's, Innocence and The Golden Child do.

I might be interested in The Beginning of Spring for the Russian history side, but the blurb makes it sound like yet another novel about a middle-class English marriage. How does it seem?

Well I liked it and she does capture the setting well, but the one reservation in my review was indeed:

At times it seems like the Russian and period details are mere facades over an English comedy of manners

I loved City of Angels and The Bookshop, but given I spent much of my university (where 1st book is set) summer holidays visiting the areas around which the 2nd is set, the settings rather added to the attraction of the voice in a way Offshore didn't for me.

Actually I haven't read - and must in 2019 - Human Voices, At Freddie's, Innocence and The Golden Child. Recommendations as to which to start with welcome from those who have.

I didn't really get on with At Freddie's, perhaps because the subject matter didn't interest me much, and The Golden Child seemed a bit light. Of the selected four my vote will probably go to The Gate of Angels. They are all worth reading...

I am surprised at the lack of love for The Blue Flower from this group. I have only read that book for this group reading and felt it was the best of the four I have read by the author, ambitious in theme and well-excuted in a fairly unique form.

I have now read "The Bookshop", which completes the quartet. It is similar in style and tone to "Offshore" and, like it, partly based on her own experiences. "The Gate of Angels" has more of her humour than the others on this list. "Human Voices" has some humour too, but I did not find the story as interesting.

What do you think of Penelope Fitzgerald, Val?

I have enjoyed all her books I have read, these four and a few more, although I don't think I have rated any of them as 'amazing'. She has a way of phrasing things which is a little unusual, but works. I think Paul is implying that her descriptions of places are more effective if you already know those places, but they can evoke them if you do.

I think she is excellent at the one line character description, and it helps there obviously if one knows someone like the person described. Similarly with place - her books are so relatively brief that if there is recognition it helps: although I don’t know Russia 100 years ago at all, even from other novels, but still loved The Beginning of Spring.

Upstream issue was raised about lack of appreciation of The Blue Flower. I think for me it felt like Fitzgerald writing a book that, while good, wasn’t what I expected from and loved in her other novels. Interesting to hear from those - our host I think is one? - that love all her books but regard The Blue Flower as the pinnacle.

I’m not sure I’d call it her pinnacle. I do love it, though, and I find its qualities largely elusive to my abilities to articulate. It’s soft and felt to me like spatters of real lives being lived, lives that ended so soon and that have now been over for centuries!

Maybe I need to reread it without expecting to be wowed and see if it feels different.

Maybe I do too.

I think "The Beginning of Spring" might be a subtle satire on portentous Russian novels and plays, where domestic events take on a wider significance (eg "Doctor Zhivago" for one set in the same time period). Children are abandoned at railway stations, but get home safely. A wife runs off, but does not fling herself in front of a train and nobody shoots themselves. Some people are involved in revolutionary politics, but don't actually do anything revolutionary.

That’s an amusing take on that, Val!

Always a pleasure to spend time in Fitzgerald's company - I just would rather not have shared the invitation with Fritz

My review of Blue Flower

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

I have just picked up a copy of Julian Barnes' Through the Window: Seventeen Essays and a Short Story. The first chapter is about Fitzgerald and he makes this interesting point about the distinction between her early and later novels.
"Many writers start by inventing away from their lives, and then, when their material runs out, turn back to more familiar sources. Fitzgerald did the opposite, and by writing away from her own life she liberated herself into greatness."

I disagree with Barnes - I would say most writers begin - at home and then branch out: Margaret Drabble, Doris Lessing, V.S. Naipaul.
Fitzgerald began writing with biographies, moved into fiction later and I think The Bookshop, Offshore, Gate of Angels and the Russian set The Beginning is Spring have strong autobio elements especially the wife/husband relationships.