Scan barcode
A review by lelia_t
The Gate of Angels by Penelope Fitzgerald
4.0
Penelope Fitzgerald doesn’t like to do the reader’s work for her. She doesn’t hold our hands and belabor points to make sure we’re connecting the dots, which makes this a book I loved even more on a second reading. And I look forward to a third and fourth, etc.
The plot is seemingly straightforward. Young Fred Fairly and Daisy Saunders, from different social spheres, are each trying to find their way. A chance encounter throws them together and Fred finds himself in love. But does he believe in love? He’s been busy in his academic career expelling “the comforting unseen presences which, in childhood, had spoken to him and said: Give me your hand.” Daisy, meanwhile, is simply trying to make a living, but “not knowing how dangerous generosity is to the giver,” her kind nature gets her into scrapes.
Theories of what’s true and knowable and which moral codes to live by are expounded and debated. And lived experience proves many of them wrong. Daisy, who has to fend off the groping hands of men on the tram on a daily basis, is told by her minister, “You should get rid of this idea of life as a battlefield.” Fred thinks, “there is no purpose in the universe, but if there were, it could be shown that there was an intention, throughout recorded and unrecorded time, to give me Daisy.” And he’s right. Throughout the novel a force moves - believed in by some, denied by others - that seems magical, supernatural.
There’s also brief, realistic glimpses into the lives of women, encumbered by the accouterments of homemaking and other realities. As a nurse tells Daisy, “As a rough guide, remember that while the average man is ill for four days a year, a grown woman must expect to spend one fourth of her life in actual pain.”
This book is a remarkable mixture of the fatalistic and the hopeful. There’s a grim sense that all life is compromise - except for a pampered few - and yet a buoyancy in Daisy’s capacity for enjoyment or in Fred’s friend Skippey’s faith that the solution they need “will present itself as we go.” And through it all, Fitzgerald’s voice is gentle, severe, funny and intelligent.
The plot is seemingly straightforward. Young Fred Fairly and Daisy Saunders, from different social spheres, are each trying to find their way. A chance encounter throws them together and Fred finds himself in love. But does he believe in love? He’s been busy in his academic career expelling “the comforting unseen presences which, in childhood, had spoken to him and said: Give me your hand.” Daisy, meanwhile, is simply trying to make a living, but “not knowing how dangerous generosity is to the giver,” her kind nature gets her into scrapes.
Theories of what’s true and knowable and which moral codes to live by are expounded and debated. And lived experience proves many of them wrong. Daisy, who has to fend off the groping hands of men on the tram on a daily basis, is told by her minister, “You should get rid of this idea of life as a battlefield.” Fred thinks, “there is no purpose in the universe, but if there were, it could be shown that there was an intention, throughout recorded and unrecorded time, to give me Daisy.” And he’s right. Throughout the novel a force moves - believed in by some, denied by others - that seems magical, supernatural.
There’s also brief, realistic glimpses into the lives of women, encumbered by the accouterments of homemaking and other realities. As a nurse tells Daisy, “As a rough guide, remember that while the average man is ill for four days a year, a grown woman must expect to spend one fourth of her life in actual pain.”
This book is a remarkable mixture of the fatalistic and the hopeful. There’s a grim sense that all life is compromise - except for a pampered few - and yet a buoyancy in Daisy’s capacity for enjoyment or in Fred’s friend Skippey’s faith that the solution they need “will present itself as we go.” And through it all, Fitzgerald’s voice is gentle, severe, funny and intelligent.