The Golden Child - Softcover

Penelope Fitzgerald

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0006546250 ISBN 13: 9780006546252

Publisher: HarperCollins UK, 2004

Synopsis

The 'Golden Child', Penelope Fitzgerald's first work of fiction, is a classically plotted British mystery, centred on the arrival of a new exhibit at a London museum. Whilst the exhibit lures thousands of spectators, it also becomes the focus for murder.

About this title

Review:

Penelope Fitzgerald's first novel is packed with institutional follies and fiercely territorial old trouts. Set in a London museum whose officers only appear august, The Golden Child literally proves that authorities are clowns and clowns authorities. As the book opens, all England is queuing up to see the golden treasure of the Garamantes--the remains of a young king who was interred complete with a trove of toys and goodies. Only the man who unearthed the kinglet back in 1913 refuses to go anywhere near the exhibit, despite his constant proximity: "Sir William, in extreme but clear-headed old age, and after a lifetime of fieldwork, had come to roost in the Museum itself." Meanwhile, everyone--from nations to corporations--wants a piece of the Golden Child. (The exhibit is even underwritten by a company that hopes its puff, "Silence is Golden," will give its cigarettes more positive associations.) What, then, if the relics are cursed--or fake?

As both possibilities grow increasingly likely, and the Museum risks ridicule, its director deputizes Waring Smith to transport the mummy's doll to an incorruptible expert. Too bad if Professor Semyonov is in Russia: this junior officer will simply have to smuggle the toy in! Suffice it to say that Waring's covert odyssey to Moscow is but one of The Golden Child's many witty--and enigmatic--episodes. Near the Kremlin, he comes upon a line that makes him think he's back at work. The citizens, though, have assembled for another mummy altogether:

The park statues were covered with shrouds of straw to protect them against the cold, but the human beings stood there, wiping the frozen drops from noses and eyelashes, waiting with immemorial patience to see what they had been told was worth seeing. In an hour and a half they would be filing past the embalmed head and hands, and the ghastly evening dress suit, of Lenin.

On the surface, Fitzgerald's 1977 novel is a bona fide mystery, complete with a body in the library and a spot of garroting. But adepts of this author will prize it for its pixilated cast of characters and for its gentle, perfect assaults on pretension--whether academic, journalistic, or even gustatory. As ever, Fitzgerald is drawn to explore the power--and sheer inconvenience--of the emotions. No wonder The Golden Child's mysteries go so far beyond those of its genre. --Kerry Fried

About the Author:

Penelope Fitzgerald was one of the most elegant and distinctive voices in British fiction. Three of her novels, The Bookshop, The Beginning of Spring and The Gate of Angels, have been shortlisted for the Booker Prize. She won the Prize in 1979 for Offshore. Her last novel, The Blue Flower, was the most admired novel of 1995, chosen no fewer than nineteen times in the press as the 'Book of the Year'. It won America's National Book Critics' Circle Award, and this helped to introduce her to a wider international readership. She died in April 2000, at the age of eighty-three.

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperCollins UK
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0006546250
• ISBN 13: 9780006546252
• Binding: Paperback