On an unusually upbeat evening, I was winding up from work. The recently bought, crisp, intense 300-pages long fictional drama, that I had left, tantalizingly, at the 273rd page the previous night, was softly tip-toeing in front of my eyes. The unread pages were already floating invitingly in the...
How dare I refuse to give this book that was named Book of the Year by nineteen British newspapers in 1995 and won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1997 anything less than a five?NYT reviewer Michael Hofmann wrote of The Blue Flower: It is an interrogation of life, love, purpose, experie...
An exquisite little novel in which not much happens until the end, and yet, due to storms of all kinds, the whole world of each protagonist changes irrevocably. Flux, Transition, Contrast, Stagnation"Reality seemed to have lost its accustomed hold, just as the day wavered uncertainly between nigh...
Charlotte Mew was an English poet born in 1869, died a (gruesome) suicide in 1928. She was a deeply divided (socially, economically and sexually), troubled woman of immense talent, mostly thwarted but not quite genius. Fitzgerald’s handling of the subject is masterful if quirky in the usual Fit...
Within the last year i've developed the nasty habit of doing two things in bed i never had before: eating and watching television. i know. Disgusting to read, debilitating to experience - as these can only be called habits by the kindest or least caring minds and are in fact addictions of the fi...
Penelope Fitzgerald was one of the most highly-regarded writers on the English literary scene. Apart from Iris Murdoch, no other writer has been shortlisted so many times for the Booker Prize. Her last novel, The Blue Flower, was the book of its year, garnering extraordinary acclaim in Britain, A...