A Month of Novellas, Book 1: Human Voices - Penelope Fitzgerald (1980)

As with any endeavor, some rules had to be established.

I decided to keep the novellas/short novels to under 150 pp. long. Not only to ensure that they were novellas but also because of time constraints. It'll probably be hard as it is to read an average of one a day for the next month, so brevity was of the essence. At the same time I'm not rigidly attached to this rule, so if I found a novella that was 152 pp. long, you bet your sweet bitty I'm going to include it in my list. I'll also be sure to include a list of the titles and authors with links to their Goodreads pages when I complete the month.

Now onwards with the reading!

on nj transit train traveling through the meadowlands

 I'd never heard of Penelope Fitzgerald up until a few years ago, and now cut to a few years later, I own at least 4 books by her. I think it all started with a Christmas gift to my husband and moi from our friend J.C. (no, not Jesus Christ, but close :) ). Knowing that we already had one or two of her titles at home, made me eager to bring it some more companions to join them in our bookshelves. Which is how we've ended up with a handful of her novels but have yet to read any of her work.

Or had read her, up until today...

As I mentioned, I already owned a couple of her novels, but a quick perusal of my stash revealed a 137 pp. one amongst them. Technically it's 144 pp. but it starts on p. 7, so you do the math ;o)

Not knowing anything about this novel besides whatever description was on its' back cover, I dug into it.

It was a little hard going at first.

The novel is about a misfit group of broadcasters/administrators/general civil servants at the Beeb, or the British Broadcasting Corporation as it's formerly called (BBC). It's set during World War II in their London headquarters during the height of the Blitz.

I say it was a little hard going because I honestly couldn't keep track of who was whom in the beginning. Actually even on the last page I was momentarily confused as to what had happened to whom during a climactic moment. There were a lot of DDP and RDPs thrown around which were speedy abbreviations for high positions within the the BBC, but which left a civilian like me clueless.

I didn't think that too much would happen in such a slim volume, but entire lifetimes were lived within its' pages. As other reviewers have mentioned, it's not just the soldiers in the front lines that turned out to be heroes of the war. So were these people, civil servants, keeping the proverbial home fires burning around the reassuring sounds of the Beeb over the radio waves.

An entire community lived and worked together in that building, sometimes unable to even leave it for fear of not being able to return in time to do their shift, and later on for fear of being bombed by the Germans.

And some of the writing was glorious! And silly too!
"Lise replied that she was psychic, with the result that she had a certain sensation in the points of her breasts when Frede was near at hand." pp. 37

Or this remark about women living alone:
"'It's just that one has to be careful when living alone,' said Mrs. Staples. 'When one's children are grown up or in the Forces and the flat is empty I find that one talks to certain pieces of furniture quite often, and to oneself, of course.'

'The thing is not to be too hard on oneself,' Mrs. Milne replied." pp.105

I ended up really enjoying this novel as it set me up smack dab in the middle of war torn London in an everyday and yet extraordinary situation. It was a great choice to start off my month of novellas written by women.