The Beginning of Spring

Fitzgerald was the author of several slim, perfect novels. The Blue Flower and The Beginning of Spring both had me abuzz for days the first time I read them. She was curiously perfect. Teju Cole, author of Open City March 1913. Moscow is stirring herself to meet the beginning of spring. English painter Frank Reid returns from work one night to find that his wife has gone away; no one knows where or why, or whether she ll ever come back. All Frank knows for sure is that he is now alone and must find someone to care for his three young children. Into Frank s life comes Lisa Ivanovna, a quiet, calming beauty from the country, untroubled to the point of seeming simple. But is she? And why has Frank s bookkeeper, Selwyn Crane, gone to such lengths to bring these two together? Writing so precise and lilting it can make you shiver. Los Angeles Times A singular achievement. Boston Globe PENELOPE FITZGERALD (1916 2000) was one of the most elegant and distinctive voices in British fiction. She won the National Book Critics Circle Award in fiction for The Blue Flower, the Booker Prize for Offshore, and three of her novels The Bookshop, The Gate of Angels, and The Beginning of Spring were short-listed for the Booker Prize.…