A review by piccoline
The Beginning of Spring by Penelope Fitzgerald

5.0

Penelope shines again. This feels like the funniest of her novels I've read so far (over Offshore, The Bookshop, and The Gate of Angels, though they're all very witty) but it also has a beautiful weight to it. She's as perceptive as ever in swiftly, deftly describing the way people interact with one another, and her construction of story is as angular and unpredictable as ever. Fantastic. Highly recommended.

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2020 reread: still perhaps my favorite of PF’s novels. So funny. So understated and dry and witty. Stronger clarity than ever about how extremely carefully constructed her novels are without feeling at all over-schematized.