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A review by erinbottger
The Beginning of Spring by Penelope Fitzgerald
4.0
Fitzgerald's "The Beginning of Spring" is a short (under 200 pages), quirky book. The story is of an ex-pat British family living in pre-Revolution Moscow; the mother of the two children has just abandoned them, leaving for England without explanation, and leaving her husband Frank, owner of a printing business, to cope.
The domestic dilemma of the care of the children and his household preoccupy Frank who still must keep his employees and business going full tilt. He first tries to place his afterschool kids with another large family but that proves to be a disaster. In the end, he hires a Russian maiden from the countryside to manage the household.
Also, on the domestic side, Frank's wife's brother comes visiting from England to complicate things. And, through it all, everyone is trying to locate Nellie somewhere in England.
The author does a great job of capturing the humor, absurdity and essence of Russian life:
"He was heading toward the river, and the air was full of the reverberations of the bells from the five golden domes of the church of the Redeemer, not at anything like their full power, but like the full barrage of artillery before the main attack. The attack did not come-- it was Lent, and they chimed only once, but they were answered from across the river by a hundred others, always with one chime only. He stood listening to the bells in the open starlight. From the cathedral square a ramp went down to the water. The river ran darkly, still choked with the winter's majestic breaking ice and the debris carried along with it, an inconceivable amount of rubbish-- baskets, crates, way-posts, wash-tubs, wheels, cradles, the last traces of the traffic the ice had carried while, for four months, it was a high-road. Watching the breaking ice from the bridges was one of Moscow's favorite occupations. Thre Gazeta-Kopeika said that a pair of dead lovers, clutched together, had floated by, frozen into the ice. The Gazeta repeated this story every spring."
and "'Let me tell you a story from the district of Orel, from my part of the country,' shouted Kuriatin. 'What does it show? Why, simply the necessity of ruling in one's own house. A peasant took a young woman to wife...'
Kuriatin frequently told these stories, though, to do him justice, Frank had never heard him tell the same one twice. This might simply be because they weren't, as he always claimed they were, from the District of Orel, but invented to suit the occasion.
'With a hundred other women to chose from he took a lazy one, a lazy girl who did everything in the house as badly as possible, and made him sell his horse to buy her fine clothes. Meanwhile, the bread she made was so heavy that it had to be thrown to the pig. and the pig died in great pain. And the linen she spun was so coarse that when the husband got into bed with his wife the sheets tore off his skin. In the end, he said to the woman, 'You have caused me to sell the horse, the pig is dead and you have borne no children. So now you can get between the shafts and live on oats and rye, and do a horse's work.' In this way, he showed he was master in his own house. Remember that story, because there's a great deal of benefit to be got from it.'
'There's no benefit at all,' Frank replied. 'I object to it in principle and in detail.'
'You don't understand it. You have no peasants in England, and therefore no stories.'
'We have plenty of stories,' said Frank, 'but the woman always comes off best.'
'All the more reason to remember this one.'"
This story ends with a surprise, but you understand the family will need to escape Russia as the Bolshevik Revolution is about to burst on the scene. I think most readers will enjoy this tale and take pleasure in the poetic language and well-drawn characters.
The domestic dilemma of the care of the children and his household preoccupy Frank who still must keep his employees and business going full tilt. He first tries to place his afterschool kids with another large family but that proves to be a disaster. In the end, he hires a Russian maiden from the countryside to manage the household.
Also, on the domestic side, Frank's wife's brother comes visiting from England to complicate things. And, through it all, everyone is trying to locate Nellie somewhere in England.
The author does a great job of capturing the humor, absurdity and essence of Russian life:
"He was heading toward the river, and the air was full of the reverberations of the bells from the five golden domes of the church of the Redeemer, not at anything like their full power, but like the full barrage of artillery before the main attack. The attack did not come-- it was Lent, and they chimed only once, but they were answered from across the river by a hundred others, always with one chime only. He stood listening to the bells in the open starlight. From the cathedral square a ramp went down to the water. The river ran darkly, still choked with the winter's majestic breaking ice and the debris carried along with it, an inconceivable amount of rubbish-- baskets, crates, way-posts, wash-tubs, wheels, cradles, the last traces of the traffic the ice had carried while, for four months, it was a high-road. Watching the breaking ice from the bridges was one of Moscow's favorite occupations. Thre Gazeta-Kopeika said that a pair of dead lovers, clutched together, had floated by, frozen into the ice. The Gazeta repeated this story every spring."
and "'Let me tell you a story from the district of Orel, from my part of the country,' shouted Kuriatin. 'What does it show? Why, simply the necessity of ruling in one's own house. A peasant took a young woman to wife...'
Kuriatin frequently told these stories, though, to do him justice, Frank had never heard him tell the same one twice. This might simply be because they weren't, as he always claimed they were, from the District of Orel, but invented to suit the occasion.
'With a hundred other women to chose from he took a lazy one, a lazy girl who did everything in the house as badly as possible, and made him sell his horse to buy her fine clothes. Meanwhile, the bread she made was so heavy that it had to be thrown to the pig. and the pig died in great pain. And the linen she spun was so coarse that when the husband got into bed with his wife the sheets tore off his skin. In the end, he said to the woman, 'You have caused me to sell the horse, the pig is dead and you have borne no children. So now you can get between the shafts and live on oats and rye, and do a horse's work.' In this way, he showed he was master in his own house. Remember that story, because there's a great deal of benefit to be got from it.'
'There's no benefit at all,' Frank replied. 'I object to it in principle and in detail.'
'You don't understand it. You have no peasants in England, and therefore no stories.'
'We have plenty of stories,' said Frank, 'but the woman always comes off best.'
'All the more reason to remember this one.'"
This story ends with a surprise, but you understand the family will need to escape Russia as the Bolshevik Revolution is about to burst on the scene. I think most readers will enjoy this tale and take pleasure in the poetic language and well-drawn characters.