Rating: 
Summary: A real disappointment
Review: Penelope Lively's The Gate of Angels [nominated for the Booker Prize in 1990] was a disappointment. The basic plot device is a bicycle collision between a fellow at Cambridge's St. Angelicus College and a young woman, Daisy, of an uncertain past. I found all of the characters and dialogue a bit too precious. Perhaps this is one of those books that only an Oxford don (who would, perhaps, appreciate the academic setting) could appreciate. It left me cold.
Rating: 
Summary: ¿I don¿t say I won¿t Fred¿
Review: That declarative double negative is about as definitive as the various parts of this story ever seem to be. When I reviewed "The Blue Flower" I said Ms. Fitzgerald didn't hand the story to you. In "The Gate Of Angels" I'm still trying to decide what the reader was supposed to find, what resolution we were supposed to arrive at. One Commercial Review suggested the end was left for us to decide, and while that may sound like an easy out from a wraith like ending, it is quite reasonable.Ms. Fitzgerald is meticulous in what she writes, or perhaps what she only implies in this story. A portion of the story centers on debating, with the participants arguing that position which they personally do not believe. Good deeds are punished, perception though erroneous, too is punished, and when one character falls ill and while being helped exclaims "Surely it can't be...?" again it is a negative, not because the help is proffered, but because of the makeup of the individual who has walked on the grass. I believe as with "The Bookshop" Ms. Fitzgerald unfolds her story much as it would happen were it true. Sometimes we fear a confrontation, only to find it existed in our minds only. Family that we feel we should know better than all others can surprise and shock. Her books are not all neatly tied up with contrivance like most, not everything is resolved, mistakes and wrongs remain, and all is not fixed. For anyone who has not yet had the pleasure of reading one of this lady's works, a clarification is important. Comparing anything she writes to commercial supermarket checkout romance novels is patently absurd. This Authoress writes at a level that is universally admired by her peers and Professional Critics alike. To make the earlier comparison of her work can be described most charitably, by hoping that someone who never opened one of this lady's books made the comment. Were this to appear at the cinema it would be a stretch to get much past PG. This lady is a writer of distinction, not a purveyor of mindless trash.
Rating:
Summary: Diamond in the Rough
Review: The canon of great literature - Melville, Hawthorne, Marquez, Morrison, Dickens, Austen, etc. - could really use some modernity. Fitzgerald is the best of any contemporary author that I've found (a professor that I had in college taught only Penelope Fitzgerald in his "Contemporary English Literature" course). It's amazing how much substance can be found in books that never exceed 200 pages. "Gate of Angels," I think, is her swan song - although "The Bookshop" is the best overall read.
Rating: 
Summary: Nobody does it better
Review: The hero of this novel, a young don, thinks that science will offer certainty and refuge from the vagaries of the spiritual. On the other hand--after he finds himself naked in bed with an unknown woman--the vagaries of the physical threaten to undo him quite. (Remember, this wild novel is set at Cambridge University in 1912, in a college which very much doesn't allow women.) I love and fear each new Fitzgerald novel--love because she's so great, fear because, well, what if I don't like it as much as all the others? I'm finally beginning to learn that fear is unnecessary--enjoyment (not to mention, relativity) is all!
Rating:
Summary: There are more things in heaven and earth...
Review: This is a lovely book. Penelope Fitzgerald was a subtle writer. She had a marvellous gift for conveying character and setting with the minimum of fuss. Consequently, her novels are quite short and easy to read. `The Gate of Angels' gives us England at the beginning of the 20th Century. The advances of Rutherford and Mach (among others) were being disseminated. Scientific rationalism was to the fore. This is chiefly represented in Fitzgerald's central character, Fred Fairly, a junior fellow at a Cambridge College. However, his chance meeting with Daisy Saunders begins to challenge his view. While Fitzgerald never explicitly says so, the implication is clear: even in a world where science is thought to explain everything, there are some aspects of that world which will not bow. Some may find the lack of resolution frustrating. However, enough has been said to reasonably leave any further consequences to the readers' imagination.
Rating: 
Summary: make it longer or cut out the useless stuff
Review: This seems like a book with potential to be great, but you end up spending much of it reading about things that have very little to do with the plot. Discussions of physics when this is supposed to be a friendly romance novel doesn't quite make sense. The only truly likable character is Daisy, who is the only ray of sunshine in this book, the only one who makes much sense. If the author wanted to concentrate so badly on the intellect of St Angelicus college, she should have tied it in with the story a bit more; same with the tastes of religious beliefs they discuss.
Rating:
Summary: The most Jane Austen-like late Fitzgerald novel
Review: This seems to me the Fitzgerald novel that is most akin to Jane Austen. The reader wants the right pair to couple (I'm not convinced the couple in _Innocence_ is the right pair; in many other Fitzgerald novels there is no right pair, and the one here is open to question). The irony and syntax seem Austenian, though the epistemological status of atomic physics is not directly addressed in anything by Jane Austen. Certainly, there are unaffluent clergymen aplenty in Austen, and damsels who don't recognize the match the reader recognizes. In Austen there are also plenty of unmarried males who are also slow to recognize their appropriate partner. Daisy is not socially appropriate (if they wed, he'll be marrying down), but Fred Fairly is certain he must have her.
There is a plot, including a court case (also a ghost story), so The Gate of Angels is more like _The Bookshop_ than the other three late Fitzgerald novels (the four not seemingly based to some extent on her experience of particular times and places). Fitzgerald had a phenomenal gift for sketching characters. She was able to develop characters more fully than she did any in The Gate of Angels. I'd like to know how Fred's sisters got on, for instance. Or something of the "private life" of Professor Flowerdew. Sometimes less is not more! Even for someone who was a genius of concision.
Rating:
Summary: The most Jane Austen-like late Fitzgerald novel
Review: This seems to me the Fitzgerald novel that is most akin to Jane Austen. The reader wants the right pair to couple (I'm not convinced the couple in _Innocence_ is the right pair; in many other Fitzgerald novels there is no right pair, and the one here is open to question). The irony and syntax seem Austenian, though the epistemological status of atomic physics is not directly addressed in anything by Jane Austen. Certainly, there are unaffluent clergymen aplenty in Austen, and damsels who don't recognize the match the reader recognizes. In Austen there are also plenty of unmarried males who are also slow to recognize their appropriate partner. Daisy is not socially appropriate (if they wed, he'll be marrying down), but Fred Fairly is certain he must have her.
There is a plot, including a court case (also a ghost story), so The Gate of Angels is more like _The Bookshop_ than the other three late Fitzgerald novels (the four not seemingly based to some extent on her experience of particular times and places). Fitzgerald had a phenomenal gift for sketching characters. She was able to develop characters more fully than she did any in The Gate of Angels. I'd like to know how Fred's sisters got on, for instance. Or something of the "private life" of Professor Flowerdew. Sometimes less is not more! Even for someone who was a genius of concision.
Rating:
Summary: Pure delight
Review: This tale, while both haunting and memorable, was my introduction to Fitzgerald. Her descriptions are wonderful, the characters full of depth. I highly suggest this novel. It is not traditional, but very engaging.
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