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The Gate of Angels

The Gate of Angels

Author(s): Penelope Fitzgerald

Location(s): Cambridge, London

Genre(s): Fiction, Historical

Era(s): 1912

Location

Content

Set in Cambridge and London in 1912, The Gate of Angels is a love story and a novel of ideas. Fred, a rector’s son, has abandoned religion for observable truths, whereas the undereducated Daisy is a Christian for whom the truth is entirely relative. The novel’s strengths lie in what we have come to expect from Fitzgerald: a blend of the hilarious, the out-of-kilter, and the intellectually and emotionally provocative. She confronts her characters with chaos (theoretical and magical), women’s suffrage and seemingly impossible choices, and we can by no means be assured of a happy outcome. “They looked at each other in despair, and now there seemed to be another law or regulation by which they were obliged to say to each other what they did not mean and to attack what they wished to defend.”

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Lead Review

Gilbert could have written this and Sullivan set it to music. It shows an Edwardian university at Cambridge at its eccentric best. There are so many characters that are a delight. So many foibles...

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