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lelia_t's review against another edition
3.0
I was as baffled by this book as the characters seem to be by each other. There’s no predictable story arc, nothing much happens, the characters seem vague to themselves and to me. And yet, I liked the book. By the time I got to the end, I was excited to reread it and see if knowing what to expect helped me settle in better. What I enjoyed most was the understated one-liners, such as the Count doing “one of the easiest impersonations of himself.” And it did make me think about how we all tend to bumble around, self-preoccupied, assuming we understand other people but so rarely really seeing them.
bub_9's review against another edition
5.0
This was truly a delight. It's lucid, deliberate, but also effortlessly wry and vital.
One always feels that Fitzgerald has carefully gone over the raw material on her workbench, trimming out any extraneous material and leaving us with a work that is never afraid of itself nor braggadocious in any way.
It's not really a book you read for theme or insight, just one to take delight and pleasure in the sheer comedy and fun of the work. If I had to say one thing, though, it would be that the title essentially encompasses the complexities of the work - the innocence of the characters and how it can be both an advantage or a drawback, and how it is this same innocence that leads us to view these characters affectionately rather than judgmentally; perhaps something more of us could learn to do in reality too.
One always feels that Fitzgerald has carefully gone over the raw material on her workbench, trimming out any extraneous material and leaving us with a work that is never afraid of itself nor braggadocious in any way.
It's not really a book you read for theme or insight, just one to take delight and pleasure in the sheer comedy and fun of the work. If I had to say one thing, though, it would be that the title essentially encompasses the complexities of the work - the innocence of the characters and how it can be both an advantage or a drawback, and how it is this same innocence that leads us to view these characters affectionately rather than judgmentally; perhaps something more of us could learn to do in reality too.
grubstlodger's review against another edition
4.0
Innocence was the last Penelope Fitzgerald book I had left to read and I was saving it for a rainy day. There’s been a few of those recently, so I cracked the book open.
I was a little unsure at first where we were and where we were going. There was a story about a family of medieval midgets who filled their house with others so that their daughter would feel everyone was her height. The trouble was when one of the retinue suddenly started to grow and they decided to pluck her eyes out and chop her off at the knees.
Then we find ourselves in the 1950s and the preparation for a wedding, then things settle down and it turns out that this is one of the more conventional Penelope Fitzgerald novels. It’s essential a story of courtship and the early days of marriage - except the courtship doesn’t really occur between the two lovers, Salvatore and Chiari but between the gobetweens. My favourite being Barney, a tall, confident British schoolfriend of Chiari who blunders into the faded gentility of Florence like a clumsy puppy.
I liked the characters in general; Cesare, the most laconic man in Italy, Giancarlo, the lazy master of the family, the pompous monsignor and Gentellini who is.. gentle. Also, there are other golden stories amongst the courting one. My favourite being little Savaltore’s hellish visit the the ageing, decaying Gramsci.
Of course, this being Penelope Fitzgerald, there are many brilliant, spiky one-liners. Such as how Chiari and Salvatore, in the early months of their marriage “quarrelled, but not as successfully as they made love.” Or the mad aunt, Mad, who “did not believe she had the capacity to do harm” and so wanders about awkwardly, causing problems.
Of course this has the patented Fitzgerald ending, namely the book builds to a crisis which is dissolved and then the book just finishes. After my experience with her, I was expecting an ending like this and even looking forward to it. I also realised why she does it, because it leads inevitably to the question of ‘what next?’ which means that each of her books lingers a little more than a tidily closed one.
Not quite as ambitious as The Beginning of Spring or The Blue Flower or as recognisable as The Bookshop or Offshore, this book manages to be a really good balance of the two main stages of Fitzgerald’s novelistic career and I really enjoyed it.
I was a little unsure at first where we were and where we were going. There was a story about a family of medieval midgets who filled their house with others so that their daughter would feel everyone was her height. The trouble was when one of the retinue suddenly started to grow and they decided to pluck her eyes out and chop her off at the knees.
Then we find ourselves in the 1950s and the preparation for a wedding, then things settle down and it turns out that this is one of the more conventional Penelope Fitzgerald novels. It’s essential a story of courtship and the early days of marriage - except the courtship doesn’t really occur between the two lovers, Salvatore and Chiari but between the gobetweens. My favourite being Barney, a tall, confident British schoolfriend of Chiari who blunders into the faded gentility of Florence like a clumsy puppy.
I liked the characters in general; Cesare, the most laconic man in Italy, Giancarlo, the lazy master of the family, the pompous monsignor and Gentellini who is.. gentle. Also, there are other golden stories amongst the courting one. My favourite being little Savaltore’s hellish visit the the ageing, decaying Gramsci.
Of course, this being Penelope Fitzgerald, there are many brilliant, spiky one-liners. Such as how Chiari and Salvatore, in the early months of their marriage “quarrelled, but not as successfully as they made love.” Or the mad aunt, Mad, who “did not believe she had the capacity to do harm” and so wanders about awkwardly, causing problems.
Of course this has the patented Fitzgerald ending, namely the book builds to a crisis which is dissolved and then the book just finishes. After my experience with her, I was expecting an ending like this and even looking forward to it. I also realised why she does it, because it leads inevitably to the question of ‘what next?’ which means that each of her books lingers a little more than a tidily closed one.
Not quite as ambitious as The Beginning of Spring or The Blue Flower or as recognisable as The Bookshop or Offshore, this book manages to be a really good balance of the two main stages of Fitzgerald’s novelistic career and I really enjoyed it.
blatanthedgehog's review against another edition
2.0
I love P. Fitzgerald to bits, but I didn't understand this book or the strength of it in anywhichway. It's a little meandering and holds very little space for the author to shine. I wish I could have loved it, but I don't, even if it's set in a background I am in thrall of.
vanityclear's review against another edition
3.0
Not my favorite Fitzgerald, but still charming—she's the master at the one-liner, the pithy description, the devastating phrase. Worth reading for those gems alone, but I'd still recommend OffShore to novitiates.
amyc00per's review against another edition
2.0
Yeah, it was just okay. I am a big Penelope Fitzgerald fan, but maybe I didn't 'get' this one. Or maybe it was just not that wonderful. I think my problem was with the two main characters, Salvatore and Chiara. They just aren't sympathetic, or believable, in my opinion. Chiara is too impossibly innocent (hence the title) and sappy sweet. Salvatore is both super-cynical and seems to be struggling with an immense persecution complex. Also, we are supposed to believe that they fell truly, deeply in love after a brief conversation at the theater. I just didn't care what happened to them, to be honest, and I was pretty happy when the book ended.
gh7's review against another edition
4.0
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.
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.
dr_amy_cooper's review against another edition
2.0
Yeah, it was just okay. I am a big Penelope Fitzgerald fan, but maybe I didn't 'get' this one. Or maybe it was just not that wonderful. I think my problem was with the two main characters, Salvatore and Chiara. They just aren't sympathetic, or believable, in my opinion. Chiara is too impossibly innocent (hence the title) and sappy sweet. Salvatore is both super-cynical and seems to be struggling with an immense persecution complex. Also, we are supposed to believe that they fell truly, deeply in love after a brief conversation at the theater. I just didn't care what happened to them, to be honest, and I was pretty happy when the book ended.
flogigyahoo's review against another edition
4.0
Penelope Fitzgerald needs no introduction nor does she need another good review of her book Innocence, yet I can't help it. This is about a zany group of people, two families brought together by marriage and something to smile about or even laugh at on each page. Fitzgerald wrote about Italy with a certainty and flare that Florence and environs come alive on the page seemingly effortlessly, the cobbled winding streets, the decrepit villas, the magnificent views tripping off her pen so lightly like bubbling champagne. However it is the cast of characters that beguile: Dr Salvatore of the Rossis is to marry Chiara of the Ridolfis (quite peculiar in their own way), which enables fathers, uncles, aunts, sisters, nephews, daughters, every last one of them completely dotty to get involved. And if they are not related, but friends, neighbors, colleagues, gardeners, they are equally nutty, most of them spending their time gossiping and spreading ridiculous stories about the two families. So many wonderful descriptions of the people, the Italian countryside, Italian politics, it's impossible to mention them all. A whole world which no longer exists but alive again in about 225 pages. Excellent.
nickelini's review
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0