The Golden Child

Having discovered Penelope Fitzgerald, I'm now investigating her entire ouevre, and I thought I may as well start with her first published novel, 1977's The Golden Child. It's a dry, sometimes farcical, sometimes violent satire, taking in museum politics, espionage and a quite nerdy mystery. This is another slender novel, under two hundred pages, though apparently the original manuscript was much longer. Fitzgerald's publishers demanded the excision of a whole subplot, several characters and multiple chapters. I'm not saying they were wrong, because this is a tight, weird little book that skims along (after a rather slow start).

I most enjoyed the chapter where conscientious underdog Waring Smith is dispatched to Russia to check the authenticity of an artefact with a Russian expert (who turns out to be fictitious). His few days in Moscow are surreal and Kafka-esque, as he is shadowed by a mysterious man who is not who he seems to be... After his return, events escalate with alarming speed and several bodies to a terrifically taut and frantic climax. 

Fitzgerald wrote The Golden Child partly to amuse her dying husband, and to have some digs at the 1972 Tutankamen exhibition in London. She was also getting revenge on someone at the museum who was rude to her while she was researching another book; I think I can guess who that character might be! I might not have loved this book if it was the first Fitzgerald I read, but her economical style and absurdist wit is already in evidence, and I'm looking forward to exploring the rest.