A review by gh7
The Golden Child by Penelope Fitzgerald

1.0

It's always interesting to read a writer's first novel. Usually all the themes and some of the characters of future books are clumsily present in embryo form. And it's not the case to have great expectations. But I've never read a novel by an esteemed author with less artistry than this. It's like she wrote it in a month for either a joke or money. It's a pastiche of the murder mystery genre. To begin with it seems like it might be entertaining. An exhibition of ancient world tomb artefacts with a supposed curse attached is held at a London museum (a thinly disguised British Museum). But the longer it goes on the more offensively slapstick and daft it becomes. There are entire pages where she overlooks any thought of artistry and just rambles on, clearly finding her joke much funnier than it is. I rarely give any novel one star but because lots of people haven't read Penelope Fitzgerald I feel duty bound to warn them off this one.