The Means of Escape - ISBNLookup.com

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The literary world lost one of its brightest and best fiction writers when Penelope Fitzgerald passed away in 2000. The Means of Escape: Stories is Fitzgerald's first new book of fiction since the wildly successful The Blue Flower. Her nine novels achieved rare public and critical praise, earning her both the Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award -- not bad for a woman who didn't start publishing until she was 60 years old! Sadly, The Means of Escape will be Fitzgerald's last publication. As finely tuned and dead-on as her novels, the stories collected here are brilliant studies of the absurdity of human behavior.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

When a brilliant writer like Fitzgerald births her first work at age 60, her death at age 83 earlier this year seems sadly premature. This posthumous volume of eight short stories, none of them previously published here, is thus a signal event. Strange, whimsical, sometimes gothic or bizarre, these tales demonstrate Fitzgerald's cool and civilized wit and the merciless eye she casts on worldly pretensions. Many of the protagonists are eccentric, and in every story, something is askew: an individual is at odds with the everyday world. With settings ranging from England, Scotland and France to New Zealand and old Istanbul, and in historical period from the mid-19th century to the present day, each ends with a surprising twist. A story about the perseverance of rigid class values, "The Prescription," is a cautionary tale about a man of entrenched tradition who despises the outstanding individual achievement of someone of a "lower order." In several other tales, however, a self-satisfied character is undone by someone who appears powerless but manages to triumph. The title story, in which Fitzgerald's spare description blossoms in the mind's eye to create vivid scenes capturing the social milieu of 1852 Hobart, Tasmania, deals with a minister's virgin daughter, an escaped convict and an inscrutable servant who turns the tables. In most stories, the respectable social classesDupper and middleDare cold, "just" and supercilious. The poor are clever, resourceful and doomed to suffer. Crisp, with the economical suggestiveness of poetry, these stories will be treasured by Fitzgerald's readersDwho will, however, mourn the lack of information about their chronology. (Oct.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Hermione Lee

Filled with Fitzgerald's characteristic tender, humorous apprehension of human oddness and ordinariness, and of moments of good luch which shine through memorable images...Just occasionally in Penelope Fitzgerald's luminous, dark, unflinching world, people do find their way home, or their longed-for "Desideratus", or their means of escape.
—Times Literary Supplement

Richard Eder

...miniature examples of Fitzgerald's power to subvert her stories, dismantling and enlarging them at the same time.
—New York Times Book Review

Kirkus Reviews

From the late, illustrious Fitzgerald ( Fleming, Thomas DREAMS OF GLORY Forge (336 pp.) Dec. 2000

From the Publisher

"Penelope Fitzgerald is the finest British writer alive."

The Los Angeles Times

“Warm and wry, her writing is as economical as it is perfect. It’s always a pleasure to see a new book under her name.”

The Washington Post

"She is, isn't she, the best."—A.S. Byatt

“Reading [Fitzgerald’s Tction] is like having someone play Mozart two rooms away: light, sweet—jolly, even—and utterly piercing, like a needle though the heart.”

The New Yorker

“Fitzgerald is the funniest writer in English now alive.”

New Republic