Beginning of Spring

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Penelope Fitzgerald, Andrew Miller: Beginning of Spring (1998, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Trade & Reference Publishers)

192 pages

English language

Published 1998 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Trade & Reference Publishers.

ISBN:
978-0-547-52479-5
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(1 review)

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?

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reviewed The beginning of spring by Penelope Fitzgerald

Review of 'The beginning of spring' on 'Goodreads'

This book is carefully written and conjures up a 1913 politically tense Moscow that feels very real. Frank is a son of British expats, born and raised in Russia, who has inherited his father's printing business in Moscow. His wife Nellie leaves him without explanation and he is forced to take responsibility for his three children. The nature and subsequent behavior of his quirky employees and friends, and a mysterious young women hired as caretaker for the children bring additional disarray to his already chaotic new bachelorhood. The ending was unexpected and I'm a bit confused about why the author wrote it that way. I still quite liked the book, and Fitgerald evokes the late winter slushy landscape and pre-revolutionary tension of 1913 Russia in a way that seems utterly genuine.

Subjects

  • Russia (federation), fiction
  • Fiction, historical, general
  • England, fiction