Penelope Fitzgerald is such an extraordinary writer that I really did not care this novel did not have a plot. It is about a childrens’ theatre school in the 1960s, run by a woman call Freddie, who is an institution, and knows it. She gets away with a lot :
. . . only because Freddie cared so much, and so relentlessly, for the theatre, where, beyond all other worlds, love given is love returned. Insane directors, perverted columnists cold as a fish, bankrupt promoters, players incapable from drink, have all forgiven each other and been forgiven, and will be, until the last theatre goes dark, because they loved the profession. And of Freddie – making a large assumption – they said: her heart is in it.
The story, which does not matter much, is about a new young teacher in whom Freddie discerns: “that attraction to the theatre, and indeed to everything theatrical, which can persist in the most hard-headed, opening the way to poetry and disaster.”
This made me laugh, as did her first flat in London where:
The interior smelled powerfully of feet. Still she hadn’t come to London for the fresh air there, there was enough and to spare of that at home.
What a writer!