SOURCE: “Seen and Unseen,” in Observer, September 17, 1995, p. 15.

In the following review, Ratcliffe complains that while Fitzgerald has provided a well-drawn setting and several memorable characters, she has not given all of her heart to The Blue Flower.

Penelope Fitzgerald has long mastered the high comedy of optimistic free spirits being forced to fight the unscrupulous to prove they are really free. In her earlier novels, battle was joined on native institutional soil—the British Museum, the BBC, a children’s acting school. More recently, the campaign switched to Tuscany and Russia and, most rewarding of all, to the early twentieth century which continues to inform our lives: Moscow (The Beginning of Spring, 1988) and Cambridge (The Gate of Angels, 1991) on the eve of the First World War. These are probably her best books: they are positive and inspiring.

The Blue Flower—no less ambitious but rather more detached...