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A number of books were well reviewed last weekend, but the collection of letters by Penelope Fitzgerald, So I Have Thought of You, edited by her son-in-law Terence Dooley (Fourth Estate), occupied most column inches.
Reviewers were keen to gain new insight into the life of the late Booker-winning novelist. “In person, Fitzgerald gave away little of the ruthless, tragic vision which underpins her writing,” wrote the Financial Times art critic Jackie Wullschlager. “That is why So I Have Thought Of Your, where she does reveal herself, is among the most illuminating, moving collections of letters that I have ever read.”
Wullschlager added that the collection “pulsates, too, with the uncertainty of living, the immediacy of everday impressions, [and] an insight into the imaginative, mind”.
In the Daily Telegraph, Philip Hensher wrote that the selection of letters “ventures towards what a lot of people are keen to see -- a full-dress biography”. Hensher found, however, that the letters were “patchy” and that Fitgerald “might have regretted some of [the collection’s] execution”.
Letters are grouped by correspondent, which was “not very helpful to the reader”, said Hensher, and “too often one doesn’t know to what Fitzgerald is responding or about whom she is talking”. “It is good to have some of Fitzgerald’s letters,” he concluded, “but some serious work on the apparatus before the paperback would be very welcome. She deserves, as no one doubts, the Rolls-Royce treatment.”
Hilary Spurling, writing in the Observer, agreed that “Fitgerald’s letters have been erratically edited”, which leaves the reader “baffled in a collection that offers little or no information as to chronology or context, seldom explains what any given letter is talking about and only sporadically indentifies people mentioned in the text”.
MOST REVIEWED (1st to 3rd August):
So I Have Thought Of You by Terence Dooley (ed)
(Fourth Estate 9780007136407 £25)
“Among the most illuminating, moving collections of letters that I have ever read” Financial Times
“The notes are decidedly skimpy” Daily Telegraph
“Erratically edited” Observer
Bits of Me Are Falling Apart by William Leith
(Bloomsbury 9780747591726 £10.99)
“A more accessible, true-life version of Joyce’s Ulysses” Daily Mail
“Very funny” Observer
“I wish he’d spared us the navel-gazing” Sunday Times
Our Story Begins by Tobias Wolff
(Bloomsbury 9780747597278 £18.99)
“The best introduction to this fine writer’s fiction” Guardian
“A fascinating new direction for one of America’s best short-story writers” Sunday Times
“Masterly” Sunday Telegraph
Vermeer’s Hat by Timonty Brook
(Profile 9781846681127 £18.99)
“[His approach] shows a consistent ability to depict the lives of individuals against a background of impersonal forces” Independent
“Brilliant” Guardian
“Fabulous” Sunday Telegraph