The Means of Escape (11 page)

A superb biographer and critic, Penelope Fitzgerald was also the author of lives of the artist Edward Burne-Jones (her first book), the poet Charlotte Mew and
The Knox Brothers
– a study of her remarkable father Edmund Knox, editor of
Punch
, and his equally remarkable brothers.

Penelope Fitzgerald did not embark on her literary career until the age of sixty. After graduating from Somerville College, Oxford, she worked at the BBC during the war, edited a literary journal, ran a bookshop and taught at various schools, including a theatrical school; her early novels drew upon many of these experiences.

She died in April 2000, at the age of eighty-three.

The Means of Escape
was chosen as ‘Book of the Year’ by the following reviewers: Alex Clark
(Guardian)
, David Sexton
(Evening Standard)
, Jane Gardam
(Spectator)
, Humphrey Carpenter
(Sunday Times)
, John Murray-Browne
(Financial Times)
, Polly Samson
(Independent)
, Adam Mars-Jones
(Observer)
, Hermione Lee
(Guardian)
, Simon Brett
(Daily Mail)
and Julian Barnes
(Observer).

From the reviews:

‘The Means of Escape
is full of obscure adversity. There is a dogsbody caretaker with a dubious past, a clerical assistant who is given the sack and who returns to haunt his persecutor in a ghost story of extreme, even gleeful, ghoulishness. Fitzgerald’s world is luminous, dark and unflinching but the stories are filled with her characteristic tender, humorous apprehension of human oddness and ordinariness.’
HERMIONE LEE
,
TLS

‘The sense of something colossal at the last being revealed through a tiny turn of phrase, or even a single word, proved one of Fitzgerald’s most remarkable devices. At the end of many of her most marvellous things there is a sense of a great window suddenly opening. That visionary final twist of the screw is unforgettably indulged in these stories. If you miss the significance of the word “a watch” in the last paragraph of “The Red-Haired Girl”, you will not just not understand the depth of love the heroine bears for its painter hero, but miss the point of the whole story … This is a small book, but a remarkably rich one. It sets the seal on a career we, as readers, can only count ourselves lucky to have lived through.’

PHILIP HENSHER
,
Spectator

‘Eerie, spry, and comic. Each piece expands miraculously in the mind.’
Harpers & Queen

‘This collection is excellent … a revelation. “Desideratus” – the story of a poor boy, a lost medal, and an ordeal in a great mysterious house – is strange, magical, moving … the sense of things beyond the grasp of intellect.’

ALLAN MASSIE
,
Scotsman

‘This collection contains some of Fitzgerald’s best observations. Each precise word earns its worth, and the prose falls upon the inner ear with deceptive simplicity. A great writer, an ironist in the tradition of Jane Austen, as alive as Henry James to the covert power-play which makes up so much of human intercourse.’

SALLEY VICKERS
,
Financial Times

‘In the world of these stories, fellow human beings bristle with indefinable menace. Their motives and purposes are incomprehensible, even to a comical degree. Life itself, these stories seem to say, is a delicate equipoise, kept aloft by all manner of imperceptible motions, and the journey from A to B is a graceful navigation through horrors. This is a wonderful collection – terrifying, beautiful and funny.’
The Tablet

‘A farewell of undiminishing grace … spare, witty and understated’
Boston Globe

‘“There is nothing really lasting, nothing that will endure, except the sincere expression of the actual conditions of life,” a character quotes. “Conditions in the potato patch, in the hayfield, at the washtub, in the open street!” This is what Fitzgerald captures in her writing, and why she will endure.’

Los Angeles Times
‘Best Books of 2000’

‘I’m profoundly envious of people who haven’t read Fitzgerald. There are such treasures in store for them … The stories collected in
The Means of Escape
are a distillation of her formidable talent. They display that blend of truthful observation and deadpan comedy that stamped everything she wrote.’
The Age
(Australia)

EDWARD BURNE-JONES

THE KNOX BROTHERS

THE GOLDEN CHILD

THE BOOKSHOP

OFFSHORE

HUMAN VOICES

AT FREDDIE’S

CHARLOTTE MEW AND HER FRIENDS

INNOCENCE

THE BEGINNING OF SPRING

THE GATE OF ANGELS

THE BLUE FLOWER

Harper
Press
An Imprint of HarperCollins
Publishers
77–85 Fulham Palace Road,
Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Published by Harper
Press
2001

First published in Great Britain by Flamingo 2000

This collection © the Estate of Penelope Fitzgerald 2000

‘The Means of Escape’ © Penelope Fitzgerald 1993: first published in the anthology
Infidelity
, Chatto & Windus, 1993 and
New Writing 4
, Vintage, 1995; ‘The Axe’ © Jonathan Cape Ltd 1975: first published in
The Times Anthology of Ghost Stories
, Jonathan Cape, 1975; ‘The Red-Haired Girl’ © Penelope Fitzgerald 1998: first published in
The Times Literary Supplement
, 1998; ‘Beehernz’ © Penelope Fitzgerald 1997: first published in
BBC Music Magazine
, October 1997 and
Fanfare
, BBC Books, 1999; ‘The Prescription’ © Penelope Fitzgerald 1982: first published in the
London Review of Books
December 1982 and
New Stories 8
, Hutchinson/Arts Council 1983; ‘At Hiruharama’ © Penelope Fitzgerald 1992: first published in
New Writing
, Minerva/Arts Council 1992; ‘Not Shown’ © Penelope Fitzgerald 1993: first published in the
Daily Telegraph
, 1993; ‘The Likeness’ © Penelope Fitzgerald 1989: first published in
Prize Writing
, Hodder & Stoughton, 1989; ‘Our Lives Are Only Lent To Us’ © the Estate of Penelope Fitzgerald 2001, previously unpublished; ‘Desideratus’ © Penelope Fitzgerald 1997: first published in
New Writing 6
, Vintage/The British Council 1997.

These stories are works of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in them are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.

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Ebook Edition © MARCH 2013 ISBN 9780007521418

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