[Penelope Fitzgerald's] Human Voices is about the BBC in the summer and autumn of 1940, when French troops camped in London parks, the Concert Hall in Broadcasting House was turned into a dormitory and the Blitz started. But anyone who has read her earlier novels, The Bookshop and Offshore … will know that the matter may be important but the manner is even more so. She is an individual, witty and trusting writer—trusting because she assumes that readers are as alert as she is. The tone of voice is important. In a conversation about music one of her characters is told that emotion must never intrude…. This sounds something like the discipline Penelope Fitzgerald herself writes under, and it does not imply coldness. On the contrary. The control is there because the current of feeling runs so strongly.

She is also a writer who cherishes absurdities. For example, the...