The Gate of Angels by Penelope Fitzgerald
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
What a novel! Set in a stern and disjointed college with odd and ancient roots, it follows a young professor and a working-class girl. He doesn’t know what to do with his life. Pursue academic greatness? How, in this dead-end place? Pursue love? With who, when the college forbids women to enter?
He meets the girl by accident. There’s a whiff of scandal. She is very right not to trust men. A professor tells a ghost story with symbolic resonance.
Will they or won’t they? And why has Fitzgerald been giving us all these other facts and stories? They have nothing to do with the main plot!
Except.
On the last page, she gives you one final key. One small, ghost-story element. Just a tiny thing like a filigreed toothpick. And it fits right into a little plot hole she’s left. You slide it in. Pieces shift, and click into place. The whole novel is a magnificent machine, assembling itself in a second out of a pile of scraps. Every part suddenly tight and square, the corners beveled and shining. It lifts a robot hand and pours you a cup of tea.