Penelope Fitzgerald's novel, The Golden Child, combines a deft comedy of manners with a classic mystery set in London's most refined institution—the museum. When the glittering treasure of ancient Garamantia, the golden child, is delivered to the museum, a web of intrigue tightens around its personnel, especially the hapless museum officer Waring Smith. While prowling the halls one night, Waring is nearly strangled. Two suspicious deaths ensue, and only the cryptic hieroglyphics of the Garamantes can bring an end to the mayhem. Fitzgerald has an unerring eye for human nature, and this satirical look at the art world delivers a terrifically witty read.
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"A classically plotted British mystery . . . leavened with a wicked sense of humor. Nobody is safe: pompous art critics with their gobbledygook, precious aesthetes, heads of departments, the public, the cops . . . Miss Fitzgerald has been around - the plot flops all over the place, including a trip to Russia. Somehow Miss Fitzgerald, thanks to her lovely writing style and eye for the absurd, makes everything hang together." -- Newdigate Callendar The New York Times
"Reading "The Blue Flower," Fitzgerald's 1995 novel about the German romantic poet Novalis, whichwon the National Book Critics Circle Award, gave me a shock of pleasure in her originaland uncommonly forceful literary presence. (That book, by the way, should be requiredreading for all writers and devotees of historical novels.) With the re-issue of "The GoldenChild" and "At Freddie's," all nine of Fitzgerald's novels are now available in Americanpaperback editions. Her dryly smiling wit, more reminiscent of French aphorists than British novelists, was fully evident in her first book, "The Golden Child." It's plotted as a classically dotty English murder mystery, featuring eccentric but deadly ambitious art curators." -- reviewed by Brigitte Frase Newsday
