36. The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald
Introduction: Candia McWilliam (2013); Preface:: Hermione Lee (2013)
OPD: 1995
format: 292-page paperback from 2013
acquired: May 1 read: Jun 1-5 time reading: 9:00, 1.9 mpp
rating: 5
genre/style: historical fiction theme: Booker
locations: Jena, Germany and surrounding area, 1790’s
about the author: 1916 –2000: A Booker Prize-winning novelist, poet, essayist and biographer from Lincoln, England. She was the daughter of Edmund Knox, later an editor of Punch, and Christina, née Hicks, daughter of Edward Hicks, Bishop of Lincoln, and one of the first women students at Oxford. She was a niece of the theologian and crime writer Ronald Knox, the cryptographer Dillwyn Knox, the Bible scholar Wilfred Knox, and the novelist and biographer Winifred Peck.

A novel about Novalis, a German romantic poet who died young around the year 1800. This is a book I hadn't heard of until it came in Booker posts on Facebook. One judge from every year, 1969 through 2022, was quoted. (I don't recall the source article.) Three separate judges expressed surprise/disappointment that [The Blue Flower] was overlooked in 1995. It didn't make the short list. It did win the National Critics Circle Award, an American award that first opened up to non-American novels that year. Anyway, I was curious, and it helped lead to a group read in the Booker Facebook group. And, well, it's about time I read something from Penelope Fitzgerald.

So the novel. It's quite wonderful. Historical fiction, a model for Hilary Mantel, who was an admirer for Fitzgerald. We're in the German romantic movement, with Goethe and other famous German authors, many of whom clustered in Jena, a sort of bohemian university town. This is not easy world to capture. Fitzgerald does it with the lightest touch, and, to play on the title, it blooms. (or it did for me.)

She did some things I can pick up on. She somehow conveys a massive amount of much information in a very condensed a fashion... and yet keeps her reader. You don't notice as you're reading how much accumulates so fast. And it's brief. Characters get two-word descriptions and that sticks. She also created an atmosphere. She doesn't go too far. She leaves things unexplained, and in doings so, she opens the windows to the reader’s imagination. Our minds fill in, and then keep going. In a way, each chapter, there are 55 of them, is a thought piece, an inspirational idea left for reader reflection. She also ties everything together. For what it’s worth, I think every single character introduced is revisited at some point. And, lastly, she's also charmingly humorous in many ways. Her characters are lovable.

So, we get a finger on this mind of this young inspired German poet, his odd love-life, his family, the world of Jenna, and really of 1790's Germany. We are filled with detail, and filled with ideas to pursue, and left without conclusion. Nothing goes too deep, except maybe the reader. Reader, pursue on your own.

I finished this feeling a bit muted. My next books felt wordy, and slow. In the opening scene in [The Blue Flower] it's washday, and blankets and clothes are blowing in the wind. Their owners, appropriately left as ghosts, missing. The free blowing linens left as an image we can apply in our mind to our thoughts... unlike the actual blue flower, which I never could understand.

Not every reader liked the book. But, if you like Mantel's Thomas Cromwell, I highly recommend Fitzgerald's Novalis.

2024
https://www.librarything.com/topic/360386#8558450 ( )

I wasn't sure about this book when I first picked it up, but it was given to me as a gift so I figured I should give it a try. I didn't read the introduction until after I finished the novel, and then I only skimmed it. This is a work of historical, biographical fiction, about an 18th century German poet and philosopher called Novalis. It is a strange little book, oddly compelling, filled with terminology that was probably used at the end of the 18th century to describe the ranks and professions of members of the noble classes. Novalis, known as Fritz von Hardenburg, meets and falls in love with a 12-year-old girl, a member of a family he is somehow associated with. For reasons not just of the girl's youth (less an issue in that time and place), many people abhor the match. Yet Fritz persists with his engagement, insisting that Sophie is his muse and his reason for living. Many romantic entanglements are suggested and none are fulfilled, among the supporting players in this romance. Really, to call it such is to oversimplify, and yet it is as uncomplicated a story as one can ever read. Yet somehow it evokes complex emotions and defies description. It is a beautiful little tale, and I had to check to see if it was, in fact, true. ( )

a weird book, nothing at all like her three others I've read, each of which I thought exceptional. It is a very unusual view for me, but I simply did not get the point of this work at all- as I opened with, just weird. Even the artwork in the folio edition is grotesque and ugly, and it seems I am just missing some underlying vein. ( )

Mmm. I've heard how excellent this book is so I'd love to consume it, but in audio form, I haven't got into it - I'll persist a bit longer. I must admit, the idea that the poet falls in love with a 12 year old was a barrier. ( )

i am not sure what the purpose of this was. it was much easier to read a period piece (late 1700s) than i expected, and i came to care more about the characters than i thought i would, but...i don't feel there was any reason for this book. i know that sounds harsh. maybe there is value in showing me that perhaps it wasn't totally gross for a man in his mid twenties to "fall in love" with a girl of 12? (he was waiting until she was of age to marry her or touch her, so there's that.) maybe i learned a little what it was like to live around 1800 in germany. but not much, so i don't know.

this was easy to read, well written, a little funny in parts, and probably commentary on something. but seemed to me to be largely pointless. i'd read her again as this subject was certainly a bit niche. ( )