- Paperback: 352 pages
- Publisher: Harper Perennial; (Reissue) edition (6 Dec 2004)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0006542379
- ISBN-13: 978-0006542377
- Product Dimensions: 19.6 x 12.8 x 2.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 308,733 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Review
‘Penelope Fitzgerald’s Innocence seems to me to be about real people undergoing real experiences, more real and more interesting than most biographies, and it carries absolute conviction as to time and place. What more could one ask of a novel?’ Spectator Books of the Year
‘Innocence weilds a curious fascination, replete with the sense of sleepy, slightly anxious fatalism that pervades much of the Italian cinema of the period. Its magic, and its message, are as oblique and inconclusive as the lives of its characters, but both have a lingering power, refreshingly fictive, deliciously un-English.’ Literary Review
‘I know of no one who expresses so deftly and entertainingly the way in which life seldom turns out as expected. A wonderful book.’ Spectator
‘This is by far the fullest and richest of Penelope Fitzgerald’s novels, and also the most ambitious. Her writing, as ever, has a natural authority, is very funny, warm and gently ironic, and full of tenderness towards human beings and their bravery in living.’ TLS
Product Description
Stunning modern new cover reissue of one of Penelope Fitzgerald’s best-loved novels
Innocence is set in the 1950s, when Italy was picking up the pieces after the war. Chiara Ridolfi is the guileless daughter of a decrepit Italian family. Barney is her practical English girlfriend, who can sum up a man, she says, in one firm hand-grip. Salvatore is a penniless doctor from the south, who thinks he is proof against politics, social conscience and tenderness. Chiara’s cousin, Cesare, says very little, which gives him time to think…
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First Sentence
Anyone can tell when they are passing the Ridolfi villa, the Ricordanza, because of the stone statues of what are known as 'the Dwarfs' on the highest part of the surrounding walls. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
Anyone can tell when they are passing the Ridolfi villa, the Ricordanza, because of the stone statues of what are known as 'the Dwarfs' on the highest part of the surrounding walls. Read the first page
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Your honour, here follows a bit of a winding argument, but bear with me, because I do have a point.
What I wanted to say is: Isn't it annoying when you don't like a book or film, and are then met with the superior comment "it's just that you didn't get it"? As though not understanding something is the only reason for not liking it. That happened to me with the film "Closer", for example, or the play "Miss Julie." It makes me want to shout: "No, I do get it, I'm not an idiot, but I still thought that they were bad."
And then we've got the book "Innocence" by Penelope Fitzgerald. No, I didn't particularly like it. And this time, oddly enough, I'm sure that's because I didn't get it. This is definitely not a bad book, it's probably even very good. Fitzgerald has got an effortless, pared-down style and captures emotions and people in a sentence or two. Her humour is wry and understated, her observations somewhere between razor-sharp and compassionate. There's something of Muriel Sparks over her, but then again, she's completely different...
And still I didn't get it. There are long passages discussing art and thingamejigs that I for the life of me couldn't see the point in including. There are scenes which seem totally disconnected with the rest of the text, but that I'm sure are comic little masterpieces - but the only way I would laugh while I read them would be to tickle myself with a swan feather. Or something. Only when the very lovely Barney were around did I chuckle contentedly.
Really, this is a baffling and original book - I haven't felt this weirded out since I was a kid and tried to read James Joyce (yeah I was a bit strange). Maybe I should come back to it in ten years time, when I'm older an wiser.
Bet this makes you curious to read it and see for yourself... please do, ya clever people out there, and come back and tell me what it was all about. Though I suspect all you'll do is shake your heads regretfully and say "you just don't get it".
6 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I very much enjoy Ms. Fitzgerald's work, of the nine novels she wrote I have read 8, with The Booker Award winning work, "Offshore", remaining. Presuming those that bestowed the award were correct, and the other reviewers of "Innocence" are also correct, if I were to rank the 8 novels I have read, this is number 8, and is likely to be number 9 when, "Offshore", has been completed.
Ms. Fitzgerald often has left a book with the ending open, at times in an initially jarring manner. This is again the case with "Innocence", and the ending is not alone. This work is lengthy when compared to most of Ms. Fitzgerald's works, and its length allows for more of the wonderful characters she creates, and the usually odd circumstances they create, or are victimized by. In this case, with one exception, even when well done, I generally felt nothing or actively disliked the players.
The exception is Barney, one of the most unusual, colorful, and unconventional characters Ms. Fitzgerald has created. When a female is described when smiling, as having the perfect teeth for an Ogress you are reading about someone interesting. Barney is overwhelming in everything she does, there are no half measures, and the world of half tones is invisible to her. Snap decisions based upon a handshake suffice to sanction or condemn a marriage, choose a mate, and serve as a basis for her turning her life 180 degrees in less than a moment.
There is one other prominent player in the book, and he is the Doctor. However, he is as annoying as he is prominent, and there is nothing entertaining or clever about him. He interacts with a variety of people who are all uniformly one dimensional, and are impossible to care about, much less dislike, they, like the story, drift along.
But as I said there is Barney. You have to love a woman who asks a pregnant friend, "Do you want a girl, or a little teapot?" Ms. Fitzgerald is a wonderful writer, and even this book is better than many other writers' work I have read. Her previous works have just been so much better, that this was a disappointment.
Ms. Fitzgerald often has left a book with the ending open, at times in an initially jarring manner. This is again the case with "Innocence", and the ending is not alone. This work is lengthy when compared to most of Ms. Fitzgerald's works, and its length allows for more of the wonderful characters she creates, and the usually odd circumstances they create, or are victimized by. In this case, with one exception, even when well done, I generally felt nothing or actively disliked the players.
The exception is Barney, one of the most unusual, colorful, and unconventional characters Ms. Fitzgerald has created. When a female is described when smiling, as having the perfect teeth for an Ogress you are reading about someone interesting. Barney is overwhelming in everything she does, there are no half measures, and the world of half tones is invisible to her. Snap decisions based upon a handshake suffice to sanction or condemn a marriage, choose a mate, and serve as a basis for her turning her life 180 degrees in less than a moment.
There is one other prominent player in the book, and he is the Doctor. However, he is as annoying as he is prominent, and there is nothing entertaining or clever about him. He interacts with a variety of people who are all uniformly one dimensional, and are impossible to care about, much less dislike, they, like the story, drift along.
But as I said there is Barney. You have to love a woman who asks a pregnant friend, "Do you want a girl, or a little teapot?" Ms. Fitzgerald is a wonderful writer, and even this book is better than many other writers' work I have read. Her previous works have just been so much better, that this was a disappointment.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
9 reviews
13 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Something has to come last
23 Oct 2000
Format:Paperback
I very much enjoy Ms. Fitzgerald's work, of the nine novels she wrote I have read 8, with The Booker Award Winning work "Offshore" remaining. Presuming those that bestowed the Award were correct, and the other reviewers of "Innocence" are also correct, if I were to rank the 8 novels I have read this is number 8, and is likely to be number 9 when "Offshore" has been completed.
Ms. Fitzgerald often has left a book with the ending open, at times in an initially jarring manner. This is again the case with "Innocence", and the ending is not alone. This work is lengthy when compared to most of Ms. Fitzgerald's works, and its length allows for more of the wonderful characters she creates, and the usually odd circumstances they create, or are victimized by. In this case, with one exception, even when well done, I generally felt nothing or actively disliked the players.
The exception is Barney, one of the most unusual, colorful, and unconventional characters Ms. Fitzgerald created. When a female is described when smiling, as having the perfect teeth for an Ogress you are reading about someone interesting. Barney is overwhelming in everything she does, there are no half measures, and the world of half tones is invisible to her. Snap decisions based upon a handshake suffice to sanction or condemn a marriage, choose a mate, and serve as a basis for her turning her life 180 degrees in less than a moment.
There is one other prominent player in the book, and he is the Doctor. However he is as annoying as he is prominent, and there is nothing entertaining or clever about him. He interacts with a variety of people who are all uniformly one dimensional, and are impossible to care about, much less dislike, they, like the story, drift along.
But as I said there is Barney. You have to love a woman who asks a pregnant friend, "Do you want a girl, or a little teapot?" Ms. Fitzgerald is a wonderful writer, and even this book is better than many other writers I have read. The previous works have just been so much better, that this was a disappointment.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Worth Reading More Than Once
5 Feb 2001
Format:Paperback
"Innocence" is a beautiful novel, clever and subtle. The picture of an Italian family in mid-1950's Tuscany is brought to life with astonishing economy and charm. Everything necessary to understand and empathize with the characters is there on the page. Penelope Fitzgerald was truly an artist.
8 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Pleasant, rather conventional social comedy
19 May 2000
Format:Paperback
"Innocence" may be Penelope Fitzgerald's most conventional novel. It is the first of those (7) that I've read that I didn't finish in a day. As usual, it is character-driven with a rich assortment of characters, a precisely limned milieu (Tuscany in the mid-50s), and several desultory plots filled with misunderstandings. The focus of this rather Forsterian novel is not on the overconfident, tall young Englishwoman running amok in Italy. I'm not sure there is a focus. What clicks between the romantic leads, Chiara, an Italian countess just back from an English convent school and Salvatore, a hypersensitive-to-perceived slights doctor of Southern peasant origins, remains mysterious. The (not particularly prosperous) noble family throws up no objections, though an aunt's attempt to help the newlyweds nearly has fatal consequences. The doctor's father was an admirer of Gramsci and brought his son, then aged ten, to visit the dying Gramsci (for me the book's most memorable scene).
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