[.ca] Three Novels: The Blue Flower; The Bookshop; Offshore (ISBN 0618007113)

From Amazon.com:
Since 1977, Penelope Fitzgerald has been quietly coming out with small, perfect devastations of human hope and inhuman (i.e., all-too-human) behavior. This special boxed set comprises her two prize winners, The Blue Flower and Offshore , and her tragicomedy of provincial manners, The Bookshop. The Blue Flower is the story of Friedrich von Hardenberg--Fritz, to his intimates--a young man of the late 18th century who is destined to become one of Germany's great romantic poets. In just over 200 pages, Fitzgerald creates a complete world of family, friends, and lovers, but also an exhilarating evocation of the Romantic era in all its political turmoil, intellectual voracity, and moral ambiguity. A profound exploration of genius, The Blue Flower is also a charming, wry, and witty look at domestic life. Offshore possesses perfect, very odd pitch. In the wittiest and most melancholy of prose, Penelope Fitzgerald limns the lives of "creatures neither of firm land nor water"--a group of barge-dwellers in London's Battersea Reach, circa 1961. One man, a marine artist whose commissions have dropped off since the war, is attempting to sell his decrepit craft before it sinks. Another, a dutiful businessman with a bored, mutinous wife, knows he should be landlocked but remains drawn to the muddy Thames. A third, Maurice, a male prostitute, doesn't even protest when a criminal acquaintance begins to use his barge as a depot for stolen goods: "The dangerous and the ridiculous were necessary to his life, otherwise tenderness would overwhelm him." The Bookshop unfolds in a tiny Sussex seaside town, which by 1959 is virtually cut off from the outside English world. Postwar peace and plenty having passed it by, Hardborough is defined chiefly by what it doesn't have. It does have, however, plenty of observant inhabitants, most of whom are keen to see Florence Green's new bookshop fail. In these three novels, readers will find works of fine prose, fierce intelligence, and perceptive characterization.

The beauty of economy:
The world has lost a treasure in Penelope Fitzgerald, who died earlier this year at the age of 83. She had lived for so many years by the time she began writing (her first novel was published when she was 60) that she could see what was important and what wasn't, and she learned never to waste a word. So we have novels like The Bookshop, a powerful but pinched novel that stemmed a lot of its own force, and Offshore, an absolutely perfect work that said a lifetime's worth in only 140 pages. The Bookshop, Fitzgerald's second novel, concerns Florence Green's struggle to open a bookshop in her small town, and the gentle opposition against the idea by the townspeople. There are great moments of truth and beauty, but often the Fitzgerald limits her own explorations, as if she put on blinders while writing. I love her economic style, how she says so much with so little, but in this case, she merely says "enough" with so little. With Offshore, written the year after The Bookshop, Penelope Fitzgerald has truly opened up, creating a whole tucked-away world---the houseboats of the Thames River---we feel we've visited our entire lives. It's full of moments of little truths: the cab driver who kindly takes Nenna home, the children selling antique tiles to a curmudgeonly storekeeper, the thing that drives Richard's wife away---and what brings her back. I haven't had the pleasure of reading The Blue Flower, but I promise myself that it's next on my list.