Amazon.co.uk Review
Penelope Fitzgerald wanted to call her 1990 novel "Mistakes Made by Scientists". On the other hand, she laughingly likened it to a Harlequin doctor-nurse romance. The truth about The Gate of Angels is somewhere in between. The doctor, Fred Fairly, is indeed a young Cambridge scientist, and the nurse, Daisy Saunders, has been ejected from a London hospital. If Fred is to win her love, he must make an appropriately melodramatic sacrifice--leaving the academic sanctum of St Angelicus, a college where all females, even pussycats, are banished ("though the starlings couldn't altogether be regulated").
Daisy, however, suffers from a very non-Harlequin malady, the sort found only in Fitzgerald: "All her life she had been at a great disadvantage in finding it so much more easy to give than to take. Hating to see anyone in want, she would part without a thought with money or possessions, but she could accept only with the caution of a half-tamed animal." Self- protection is certainly not this young woman's strong suit, but we admire her endurance. At one moment, Fred points out that "women like to live on their imagination". Daisy's response? "It's all they can afford, most of them."

Set in Cambridge and London in 1912, The Gate of Angels is a love story and a novel of ideas. Fred, a rector's son, has abandoned religion for observable truths, whereas the undereducated Daisy is a Christian for whom the truth is entirely relative. The novel's strengths lie in what we have come to expect from Fitzgerald: a blend of the hilarious, the out-of-kilter, and the intellectually and emotionally provocative. She confronts her characters with chaos (theoretical and magical), women's suffrage and seemingly impossible choices, and we can by no means be assured of a happy outcome. "They looked at each other in despair, and now there seemed to be another law or regulation by which they were obliged to say to each other what they did not mean and to attack what they wished to defend."

Fitzgerald's novel also records the onslaught of the modern on traditions and beliefs it will fail to obliterate entirely: women as second-class citizens and a class-ridden society in which the poor suffer deep financial and moral humiliation. The author sees the present pleasures--Cambridge jousts in which debaters must argue not what they believe but its exact opposite--and is often charmed by them. But under the light surface, she proffers an elegant meditation on body and soul, science and imagination, choice and chance. Her characters, as ever, are originals, and even the minor players are memorable: one of Fred's fellows, the deeply incompetent Skippey, is "loved for his anxiety", because he makes others feel comparatively calm.

Fitzgerald fills all of her period novels with odd, charming, and disturbing facts and descriptions. Some, like the catalogue of killing medicines Daisy administers, are strictly researched and wittily conveyed: "Over-prescriptions brought drama to the patients' tedious day. Too much antimony made them faint, too much quinine caused buzzing in the ears, too much salicylic acid brought on delirium…" Others are the product of microscopic observation, that is, imagination. Fred's family home is in hyperfertile Blow Halt, a place where no one thinks to buy vegetables, so free are they for the taking. But within this paradise, his mother and sisters are sewing banners for women's suffrage, and nature launches a quiet threat: "Twigs snapped and dropped from above, sticky threads drifted across from nowhere, there seemed to be something like an assassination, on a small scale, taking place in the tranquil heart of summer."

Synopsis
Beautiful reissue of this wonderful Fitzgerald backlist title, shortlisted for the 1991 Booker Prize In 1912 Fred Fairly is a Junior Fellow at the college of St Angelicus in Cambridge, where for centuries no female, not even a pussy cat, has been allowed to set foot ("though the starlings couldn't altogether be regulated"). Fred lectures in physics and the questionable nature of matter and worries about the universal problem known in Cambridge at the time as 'the absurdity of the Mind-Body Relationship'. To Fred this is tormenting rather than absurd. The young woman beside him when he wakes up one evening in the Wrayburns' spare bedroom might help resolve it, but how can he tell if she is quite what she seems? Fred is a scientist. To him the truth should be everything, and indeed he thinks it is. But scientists make mistakes. The Gate of Angels is a funny, touching and inspiring look at male-female relationships and the problems caused by thinking just a little too much.

From the Publisher
Shortlisted for the 1990 Booker Prize
From the reviews for The Gate of Angels "A book which delights, amuses, disturbs and provokes reflection in equal measure. It is a triumph of craftmanship, intelligence and sensibility." Allan Massie, Scotsman

"Contains more wit, intelligence and feeling than many novels three times its length. It confirms Fitzgerald's place as one of the finest and most entertaining novelists writing in England today." Michael Ratcliffe, Observer

"This is an achievement - a metaphysical novel which is entertaining, brief and a love story. The book's shortness and sparseness, combined with the complexity of its concerns, is a miracle of technique." Victoria Glendinning, The Times

"Formidable...no writer is more engaging than Penelope Fitzgerald." Anita Brookner, Spectator

"Penelope Fitzgerald writes books whose imaginative wholeness and whose sense of what language can suggest is magical. Whichever way you twist the lens of this kaleidoscopic book, you see fresh things freshly." Candia McWilliam, Standard

"The book is short and full of activity. The story moves swiftly in unexpected directions. It is inspiring, funny and touching." Peter Campbell, London Review of Books

"The sense of spiritual release brought on [by the ending] is - truly - absolutely marvellous." Lynne Truss, Literary Review

"Penelope Fitzgerald has a rare and remarkable gift; she writes with the most delicate touch of the most serious things. Her voice is never raised above the conversational level but that conversation is capable of accomodating the most profound questions, the most extreme realities...The Gate of Angels is serious, yet controlled by the comic spirit. It is beautifully evocative of time, place, moral and intellectual atmosphere, but never weighed down by excessive detail. Its lightness of tone is maintained by Penelope Fitzgerald's judgement of when to cut from one scene to another." Allan Massie, Scotsman

"Gilbert could have written this and Sullivan set it to music. It shows an Edwardian university at Cambridge at its eccentric best. There are so many characters that are a delight. So many foibles and so much fancifying. Fitzgerald is the only author I know who regularly gets reviews pleading her to write longer books." Diana Hutchinson, Daily Mail

"It is the peculiar combination of a storytelling gift and the ability to ask difficult questions lightly that makes Penelope Fitzgerald such a pleasure to read." Kate Kellaway, Listener

"Fitzgerald's sense of period is flawless... The Gate of Angels is both economical and meaty." Carol Rumens, New Statesman

Finished the book. It is quite interesting to read about Fred the scientist and Daisy the hospital worker. A bit confusing but that's what the author intended.

RELEASE NOTES:

Will bring it to the York meetup.

Picked up at Leeds meet.

Took it from the shelf at the Adelphi, let's see if it's good.

Next to the till