Penelope Fitzgerald: The Means Of Escape

By Linda Herrick*

Penelope Fitzgerald, who died in 2000 aged 83, didn't start writing until she was 60. It was as if she'd earlier been preparing for the novels and short stories that would earn her so many admirers and awards, including the Booker Prize (1979's Offshore) and the US National Book Critics Circle Prize (The Blue Flower, 1998).

The Means of Escape is a fitting sign-off, a collection of short sketches delivered in language both precise and spartan, as stealthy as a stiletto.

As usual with Fitzgerald, the narrative ranges with ease through time, geography and social class. The eponymous opener involves a rector's daughter in 1850s Hobart who befriends an escaped convict as her own means of escape, only to be foiled by the most unexpected source.

"The Axe" is a chilling meditation on redundancy, a report by a managerial underling who knows his boss does "not read more than the first two sentences".

A provincial French girl's lack of expectation in life is delivered through the eyes of an inadequate English artist who simply can't paint, while another story skewers a festival organiser who tries to manipulate a reclusive conductor out of retirement.

Colonial New Zealand is the location for "At Hiruharama", set north of Auckland, dealing with why a man's grandfather established the family motto: Never Throw Anything Away.

White foreigners in a central American town patronise the Indian population as, meanwhile, the doctor advises the colonel, struck mute by throat cancer, to study a caged starling for lessons on how to speak. "'Get out you bitch,' trilled the starling ... "

Fitzgerald plays out her stories in an oblique way that demands alertness to the slivers of comedy, menace and eccentricity that she inserts with panache. If her people have aspirations, they aren't usually able to achieve them. She, on the other hand, has left behind an enviable legacy that supports her claim, "You can write at any time of your life".

* Linda Herrick is the Herald arts editor.

* Flamingo, $21.95