Human Voices

by Penelope Fitzgerald

In 1940, as World War II heats up, the BBC is doing its best to fulfill its singular mission: saving Britain from despondency and panic without resorting to lies. "Broadcasting House was in fact dedicated to the strangest project of the war, or of any war, that is, telling the truth." Surrounded by sandbags that are literally going to seed, this London landmark has come to resemble an ocean liner both inside and out. "With the best engineers in the world," Penelope Fitzgerald observes, "and a crew varying between the intensely respectable and the barely sane, it looked ready to scorn any disaster of less than Titanic scale." Though there are no icebergs in Human Voices, Fitzgerald's perfectly pitched 1980 novel, danger does loom on several decks.

For a start, the Department of Recorded Programmes (DRP) is in for a shakeup. Sam Brooks, its director (RPD), has long ruffled the Controllers' feathers owing to his need for several nubile assistants--no wonder his unit is sometimes labeled the Seraglio. This time, however, his penchant for young women isn't the issue. Instead, it's the fact that RPD takes his calling too seriously. For instance, in response to a directive that England's heritage not be lost, he and a crack team once spent two weeks recording a creaky church door in Heather Lickington. At this point, only Jeff Haggard, the Director of Programme Planning (DPP), can save Sam; but having done that for the past 10 years, DPP is suffering from severe BBC battle fatigue.

As Penelope Fitzgerald follows this pair--and several other employees--her novel melds tragedy, surrealism, and satire into one endlessly surprising whole. As ever, she captures the momentous in the smallest moment--the joys of an orange in wartime, the pleasures of piano tuning, and the painful twists of love. When the newest member of the Seraglio makes the mistake (or is it?) of falling for RPD, she does so

absolutely, and hers must have been the last generation to fall in love without hope in such an unproductive way. After the war the species no longer found it biologically useful, and indeed it was not useful to Annie. Love without hope grows in its own atmosphere, and should encourage the imagination, but Annie's grew narrower.

As is evident in this acute passage, and in virtually every other in Human Voices, Fitzgerald can pivot from sorrow to humor by way of pessimism and desire and then back again. If you so much as blink you'll miss one of the book's key turns or unexpected pleasures. No matter. Penelope Fitzgerald's human comedy always rewards rereading. --Kerry Fried

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, War, World War II, Literary Fiction, British Literature, Historical

177 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1980

About the author

Penelope Mary Fitzgerald was a Booker Prize-winning novelist, poet, essayist and biographer from Lincoln, England. In 2008 The Times listed her among "the 50 greatest British writers since 1945". The Observer in 2012 placed her final novel, The Blue Flower, among "the ten best historical novels". A.S. Byatt called her, "Jane Austen’s nearest heir for precision and invention."

Reviews

[Petra watched Buddhist nuns learn dancing today · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is about working at the sexist BBC news service during WWII where the female broadcasters, then as now, had to be slim, pretty and young. Doesn't matter that it is only their voices that are important, the men of the BBC don't want fat old bats around. Old bats are relegated to consumer shopping shows now, or female-only morning talk shows. Fat still frowned on though.

Then as now the BBC is always subjective, they were very economical with the truth. They make sure that what was broadcast reflected their views, taking this stance with this nation or country, and another with a different one. (The BBC used public funds to campaign 'subtly' against Brexit and for increased immigration of 'asylum seekers' even if they are economic migrants). This is why the BBC has always been such a good propaganda machine, it just sounds like the voice of reason. Unless, that is your nation or issue is one of it's targets, then not only doesn't it seem objective it makes you question whether it is just as biased about other situations you know less about.

Not only is the BBC a propaganda channel, it seeks ways to ensure that it's version of the facts is the one that will continue to have prominence in the UK, 'The BBC should be protected by new laws that promote its shows over those of rivals', said James Purnell, education and radio top executive. He says that the shows the BBC makes must be given more prominence in television guides in print and online than those of commercial services.'

The world's most spoken language is English, whether as first, second or third. This is due to the BBC World Service as much as anything else. Even if your politics are in line with those of the BBC and therefore you don't see any of their broadcasting as propaganda, it is completely obvious that it is a propaganda channel for "British Values" and "Way of Life" being those of decent, educated people.

The book was dated, parochial and just plain dragged. I gave up about the half way mark. Two stars is meh, and I thought, why punish myself? There is no merit or reward for finishing a book of second-rate fiction, nothing to learn, nothing to enjoy, no grades to earn, just nothing.

I gave this book a second go late March 2017, starting where I'd left off. All it's done is confirmed that this is a dnf. Still I totally rewrote this review and feel better for it1

[Fionnuala]

There's a scene in this book, one of many scenes, where a character, one of many characters, is shelling peas. She is surprised when one of the pods she opens contains seven peas instead of the usual five. I feel a bit like her at the moment, though my experience is the opposite. For the last couple of weeks I've been cracking open book after book by Penelope Fitzgerald, and there are more peas than normal in all of them!

Yes, these books are not regular-shaped or averagely-constructed. They fit into no conventional pattern. In this one, set in the BBC studios in London during WWII, a character we think might be the main character fades out early in the story. Then a new character emerges who might be destined to be the main character but somehow the narrative dives sideways and another voice is heard more loudly until it in turn fades out. And then we reach the last line, and it refers to a character we never dreamed was the main character but it seems, all along, he was.
‘His voice in particular will be much missed.’

[Magrat Ajostiernos · Rating 3 out of 5]

Un libro extraño para mi, porque me costó entrar por él y cuando por fin lo conseguí se acabó. Creo que el problema lo tuve yo, porque estaba muy dispersa durante su lectura, y este tipo de libros plagados de personajes tan variopintos y contados desde diferentes puntos de vista merece una inmersión más atenta.
Sea como sea es una obra curiosa sobre la época de Segunda Guerra Mundial en la radio, sobre cómo la bbc "se empeñaba" en contar la verdad y toda la gente que allí trabajaba, pero contado con humor, ligero y muy costumbrista, aunque sin olvidarse de las pequeñas miserias.

[Mark Porton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Human Voices by Penelope Fitzgerald is a book of two halves for me.

We parachute into WWII London, Broadcasting House – the home of the BBC (my word I love the BBC and Australia’s ABC. Vamos Public Broadcasting!!). Anyway, there are two departments involved here - The Department of Recorded Programmes – led by Sam Brooks, a man who liked to surround himself with young female assistants, a mercurial character, insecure and quite selfish – needy too. The other being The Department of Program Planning – the boss of which is Jeffrey Haggard who is super cool, unflappable, disinterested, and half-soaked. Sam and Jeff are friends, well kind of.

In typically British Public Service tradition – acronyms are rife and quirky characters come and go. If any of you have watched Yes Minister or Dad’s Army, you’ll get the vibe here. It’s a massive piss-take, but it’s oh so subtle. Almost accidentally funny.

Sam had disappeared at the time, with an engineer, an elderly German refugee, Dr Vogel – Dr Vogel, cruelly bent, deaf in one ear, but known to be the greatest expert in Europe on recorded atmosphere

Yes, Sam Brooks’ department was responsible for the BBC’s archives of sounds. Such as door hinges, footsteps, waterfalls etc. When I read the description of poor old Dr Vogel – I had to laugh. The laughs were quick-fire resulting in that bubble of latent laughter in my chest, ready to go, to be ignited by the merest touch of mirth. Even an exclamation mark could’ve set me off in this part of the story!

The BBC is a cross between a civil service, a powerful moral force and an amateur theatre company that wasn’t too sure where next week’s money was coming from.

The humour here is typically British, it’s very self-deprecating and whimsical. It’s all acted out in an environment of German Bombers dropping their ordnance on Britain at the time.

The author so, so cleverly weaves this light story amongst that horror. That’s clever.

I found the first half of the book hilarious; I was constantly laughing. However, the second half I didn’t find funny at all really – now I am not sure if that’s because I was in a different mood, or if it was the writing. So, this experience was a bit uneven, and the character development wasn’t such that without the laughs – I wasn’t left with much else.

Having said that – this read was worthwhile, and I will certainly read this author again.

4 Stars

[Violet wells · Rating 3 out of 5]

I complained that The Book Shop had too much straining for plot for my liking; conversely, this has too little. There's something very claustrophobic about this book, as if it's never been aired outside of Fitzgerald's imagination. It felt eerily like one was going into her head. I think you can tell by her books that Penelope Fitzgerald was a very lonely woman. It's sometimes like she's not aware of the reader, doesn't even expect to have any. As if as long as she understands what's going on that's all that matters.

Human Voices is about life inside Broadcasting House during the early years of WW2. It's obvious she's writing from first-hand experience because of how intimately esoteric this book is. At times it's like we're eavesdropping on the in-jokes of a closed workplace. That said, it's very funny at times and the writing is consistently excellent. But I found I was unable to connect very deeply with any of the many characters, a problem exacerbated by there being no central character. 3+ stars.

[Jean-Luke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Objectively I realize that WWII was far from charming, but it would be a toss-up between Penelope Fitzgerald and Muriel Spark (whose The Girls of Slender Means mirrors this one) as to who could convince me otherwise. Stories examining the lives of civilians during WWII have always piqued my interest and in this case the civilians are BBC employees. A communal spoon tied to the cash register with a string in the cafeteria, the 'luxury' of oranges, baked potatoes instead of bread—small details that reflect a harsh reality and, despite a few objections from somewhere deep within, leave me charmed. Occasionally the plot comes to a grinding halt but, like the BBC after that interval of silence on the radio, it always picks up again. In 2005 Stephen Frears directed a film called Mrs. Henderson Presents, but he could just as well have directed an adaptation of this book instead. A WWII Desk Set.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having recently read, “Auntie’s War,” a non-fiction title about the BBC during WWII, I was keen to read this novel, which is also set at Broadcasting House during the war. Penelope Fitzgerald herself worked at the BBC during the Blitz. Although, as a woman, she never felt she had the prospects for a major role, she did have a ringside seat to events at this time, and this short novel does have a ring of absurd authenticity about it.

During the war, the BBC dedicated itself to a strange, and novel, idea – that of telling the truth, however unpalatable it might be. This is not to say the BBC was not under pressure from the government, and branches of the armed forces, to try to keep up morale. However, the inhabitants of Broadcasting House in this novel seem to have their own, internal, issues to keep them busy – including defeatist French Generals, the issue of who sleeps where in the BBC Concert Hall and the ever changing Junior’s who work for the Head of Recorded Programmes, Sam Brookes.

Sam Brookes, self-obsessed and nervous, spends his time looking for help from Jeff Haggard, the Director of Programme Planning and surrounding himself with pretty young women. It is through these Juniors that most of the storyline grows – especially Vi, Annie and Lise. There are also other cameos, such as John McVitie, who represents Ed Murrow. McVitie is keen, as Murrow, in fact, did, to portray the Blitz from the rooftops and asks Haggard why, during the bombing, everyone is rushing back to London. There is no answer. The English are mad, Haggard replies, including himself, and need someone to talk for them as, should they win the war, they would be very poor…

This novel has a dry humour and is full of little set pieces. Fitzgerald makes it clear that the outcome of war was very unclear. At one point, the warning of imminent invasion arrives. No bells should be rung, the instructions read, but when they are, Brooks is merely furious that they have not been recorded. Human voices are requested, as often as possible, rather than recorded ones. You feel that, among the madness of war, the BBC did their best to tell the story of what was going on around them. Fussy, spinsterish, hectoring and difficult, during the war was when the BBC gained the nickname, ‘Auntie,’ and Penelope Fitzgerald weaves a creative picture of life at Broadcasting House during that intense time and of the personalities who worked there.

[Teresa · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Till human voices wake us, and we drown.”

The above line from T.S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock planted itself in my head from the title page onward. Human voices are a necessary tool of the BBC, the setting of this novel, though some acronyms (men in charge) like classical music more: Be sure the recording isn’t flat. (There’s lots of deadpan humor in this book.) It’s London in 1940 and prerecorded voices are projected to both inform and calm the public as the war gets closer to Britain’s shores.

Though Eliot’s line stayed in my brain as I read, I wasn’t sure it belonged there, until I came across a reference to the poet himself. One of the main characters says Eliot can be seen “going to firewatch at his publishers most nights. He moves in measure, like a dancer.” (“I have measured out my life with coffee spoons” – Prufrock)

One chapter ends with what seems to me a poignant tribute to Fitzgerald’s former co-workers at the BBC:

As office managers, they were no more than adequate, but now, as autumn approached, with the exiles crowded awkwardly into their new sections, they were broadcasting in the strictest sense of the word, scattering human voices into the darkness of Europe, in the certainly that more than half must be lost, some for the rook, some for the crow, for the sake of a few that made their mark. And everyone who worked there, bitterly complaining about the short-sightedness of their colleagues, the vanity of news readers, the remoteness of the Controllers and the restrictive nature of the canteen’s one teaspoon, felt a certain pride which they had no way to express, either then or since.

(“It is impossible to say just what I mean!” – Prufrock)

Human voices finally awaken one of the main characters, yet he’s not the one who “drowns”: So goes a Penelope Fitzgerald; so goes life.

[Anastasia Hobbet · Rating 5 out of 5]

Penelope Fitzgerald is one of the finest writers of the 20th century. In the British firmament, she's right up there with Virginia Woolf, and Woolf would have given her rave reviews if only she'd lived long enough to read her books. In Human Voices, as in all Fitzgerald's novels, most of the drama and interaction of characters is under the surface, revealed in the most artful strokes of the pen. The economy of this book is remarkable. At the end--and I've now read it several times--I always sit back and wonder how she did it. Masterfully, she uses humor--however dark--instead of pathos and melodrama to tell her complicated story. In the space of 144 pages, a very slender little book, she creates a world within a world. Inside that world, a World War is coming to a head, and yet, as a reader, I hate to leave it behind, and turn the last page with great reluctance.

[Sam Schulman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful and slender, but funny a la mode de Cold Comfort Farm - about the BBC in wartime, its office politics and men and women - a bit of Terry Gilliam's Brazil in feeling, but much more vivid. And then suddenly a change in tone - and one of the most beautiful descriptions of falling in love, ever - and one of the best lessons in what it must feel like to be a woman, ever.
And then every paragraph can be like this:
The truth was that she was almost too well trained in endurance, having drawn since birth on the inexhaustible fund of tranquil pessimism peculiar to the English Midlands. . . . .when she worked at Anstruther's hosiery counter they hadn't asked the customers whether they wanted plain knit or micromesh, but 'Do you want the kind that ladders, or the kind that goes into holes?'

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

Penelope Fitzgerald is I think an under appreciated author. This story on the face of it is a comedy but for me had dark undertones. Truth telling for the BBC is a bit of an oxymoron with their truth more propaganda than actual reality in many ways. Sadly they are also head and shoulders over other broadcasters.

Fitzgerald takes her own experience working at the BBC in WWII and creates at times a funny book. Other times the sexism, misogyny and top down managerial approach is breathtakingly horrific. Slight shades of Harvey Weinstein. At least today the male to female ratio executive is more balanced.

The story if it can be called that is about to Directors and their young impressionable female staff. With a few older female staff thrown in to make things run smoothly. I feel the BBC staff are indoctrinated and believe their own propaganda. It will be interesting to see how they will survive when the license fee is scrapped.

Overall the book made me wince and chuckle at times especially the ending and the misunderstanding of a taxi.

[Lizzie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was looking forward to this one but with some hesitance. After a night with the first few pages, it was obliged to wait on my nightstand for a few weeks, and the whole time I wondered. It isn’t a smooth read, more of a jumble of sharp-edged bits that you bump alongside. It’s also almost fatally opaque, which made it hard to get through the first chapter or two. But I loved it all the same. It’s wry and sad, and astoundingly crisp.

Its outpouring of scenes from 1940 London are beyond vivid, despite their economy of emotion and the fact that so little action takes place outside the offices of BBC’s “BH”. (This is a novel written with an insider’s voice, deliberately — although we do know their names, many characters are referred to not just by their job titles but by the acronyms for them, which has RPD being BFFs with DPP and if you get confused, good luck.) So much is revealed about the practical realities of daily life as it was lived then, because it is a book all about those who are getting on with it. Yet: the thought of seeing the stars during each night’s blackout, the French retreated into London’s parks, the small slit in the blacked windows of the Tube so you could know your station, waiting on the platform as the shelterers nudge past with their kettles, the everyday sight of the barrage balloons, the mornings of broken glass, and buses cheerfully irreverent on impassable streets. The silent church bells, waiting to signal the invasion. The dust in the air. I started keeping a list of interesting items and soon I was writing down every other page number.

But this is perhaps because all these wartime details are incidentals: the charming spell is cast more deeply by the people carrying themselves on in their awkward workplace family, making do, following protocols, bunking in the converted concert hall dormitory, worrying about how to properly pronounce “aerial.” The famous newsreaders asserting their authority, and the drama department shuffling about after cutbacks to their airtime. Still, everyone in the same (almost literal) ship.

There is also something to be said, in 2017, about the description of the BBC’s willful attitude toward its job of truth-telling. But I’m really not up for the job at this moment.

It’s such a short novel, and the author’s written it as if she’s under language rationing, has got to pay by the word, and each one lands. The book unfolds the same way. Even one of the most stunning and dramatic plot developments in which a baby is ever-so-nearly born in the dormitory is clipped short of where another novelist might have allowed it to proceed, sending everyone off-stage as it were instead of indulging in an absolutely massive climax of feeling. It would have worked fine, to get this climax; possibly I would have loved it even more because heck I love feelings. But I didn’t think it was frustrating. It fits what the author is giving us: restraint amongst upheaval and extremity.

I remain absolutely fascinated by Penelope Fitzgerald and her career, and I am going to keep poking away at it until I figure out what I think. I read The Blue Flower once and didn’t know what to make of it. I still don’t feel that I liked it very much, yet I can see some of the same troublesome style here: an unclear meander of a plot, humor so dry your lips could pucker, blunt brief sentences. But it met with much more success for me in this instance; I found myself rereading the short, amazing sentences for the sheer pleasure of their words:

“When he recognized who she was he stopped pacing about and took off his spectacles, changing from a creature of sight to one of faith.”

For instance.

The primary thing I understand about this novelist’s career is that it is in two parts: realistic fiction which she wrote later in life about things she’d lived through that seemed they might make interesting novels, and historical fiction once she was finished with that. It’s the first set that makes her so unrelentingly compelling to me, both as an approach to writing books and the subjects of the books themselves. I’ve now read one of each type, and I suspect I was right about which I’m drawn to most. I look so forward to the next.

[J. · Rating 4 out of 5]

A petite fictional memoir from the Battle Of Britain, that somehow manages to be short, sweet, and light in its touch. While punching well above its weight or page count. Human Voices succeeds in putting real persons behind the glowing dials of the radio sets of the era, and manages to make real people out of what might have been stock characters. Author Fitzgerald spares her readers the typical 'In Which We Serve' treatment by marshalling interesting minutiae, slice of life reportage, and whenever in doubt switches into social satire mode with unflinching aplomb.

Part of the approach, in this inside-story of the Bbc in wartime, is that the network was fighting an entirely new kind of war, on the unpredictable, newly-discovered Information Front, for which the battlefields and rules had not yet been marked.

"Broadcasting House was in fact dedicated to the strangest project of the war, or of any war, that is, telling the truth. Without prompting, the BBC had decided that truth was more important than consolation, and, in the long run, would be more effective. And yet there was no guarantee of this. Truth ensures trust, but not victory, or even happiness. But the BBC had clung tenaciously to its first notion, droning quietly on, at intervals from dawn to midnight, telling, as far as possible, exactly what happened. An idea so unfamiliar was bound to upset many of the other authorities, but they had got used to it little by little, and the listeners had always expected it."

That the author was a veteran of the wartime Bbc makes it all very credible, and the witty prose makes it very readable. For the modern reader it is fairly alarming to grasp, detail by detail as presented by the author, how very certain Britain was of imminent occupation and disaster; it was all around them every morning, with neighboring buildings--and neighbors--bombed out of their former lives.

For those of us who now live in the unreal 24/7 media landscape of today's news cycle, the story of the nerdish, staid and yes 'plucky', no better word, national network-- taking the situation in hand --is really eye-opening, a core lesson in what journalism might aspire to in a desperate hour.

[Elizabeth (Alaska) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm more likely to appreciate British wit and humor than that of my own country. However, I'm sure I missed almost all of it here. Except maybe this, when I actually laughed out loud:

I’m not sure I’ve made myself absolutely clear about my wife. Leaving London was her idea, not mine. I don’t want you to think she’s in any way out of the picture, just because she’s never here. She sent me a photograph of the tractor ...

Part of the problem in this was that there were a lot of acronyms, and I had a hard time remembering what they were supposed to represent. Maybe this was part of Fitzgerald's humor and she was poking fun at the BBC (yes I knew that one before) and corporations in general.

What I did like was her writing style. Unfortunately, there is no characterization and no plot. It's unfair of me to use a current piece of American slang, but this is just a nothing burger. I might be convinced to try another of hers sometime, but I'll not rush out to buy one.

[Vanora Bennett · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this

What a marvellous writer Penelope F is. Who’d have thought you could tell a story about BBC staff during the Second World War and make it so much more? Off to read another book by her at once.

[Kate]

I fear that Penelope Fitzgerald and I are not meant for one another. Human Voices was highly recommended by friends whose opinions I trust and whose tastes I often share. It's set in WWII London, where I've chosen to spend a good deal of my reading time lately. And it's about the BBC, an institution for which I have a great fondness. It ought to have been perfect for me, but, alas, it was not.

There was something about the style that Fitzgerald employed in the novel that scattered my attention. I didn't dislike reading it, but nothing made a sufficient impression to stick with me after I closed the book—not the characters or the setting or the various incidents that studded the narrative. If I made the mistake of putting it down without marking my place, I was lost as, even minutes later, I couldn't remember which bit I'd already read and which I hadn't.

My inability to distinguish between the characters was a particular problem. The senior staffers were generally referred to not by their names but by acronyms of their job titles: the RPD and the DPP, and I kept forgetting what jobs the acronyms denoted and which man held which job. (I've just gone back and looked them up—the RPD is the Director of the Department of Recorded Programmes, and the DPP is the Director of Programme Planning.) The junior staffers (RPAs—assistants to the RPD), were more often referred to by their names (Lise, Vi, Teddy, Willie, and so on) but, even so, I had trouble telling some of them apart. I'm sure that this was quite deliberate—the senior men being so completely identified with their jobs that they scarcely needed names, and the junior staffers being viewed as largely interchangeable by the senior men. In the abstract, this seems to me very clever, but the ultimate effect was that the novel slid past me without leaving much of an impression, either positive or negative.

As I noted above though, other readers have responded very differently, and I can't help but think that this is a case not of a flawed book or of a flawed reader but of a mismatch between reader and book. So those of you who loved Human Voices, please offer up a counterpoint to my view with a comment below or, if you've written about the book elsewhere, with a link to your post/review. And I'd be grateful too if fans of Fitzgerald's work more broadly could tell me if you see this book as representative of her style as a whole, or if there are others of her books that you would recommend I try despite not having been much taken with this one.

[Richard Moss · Rating 4 out of 5]

Penelope Fitzgerald's career broadly falls into two stages (both arriving relatively late in life). Her last four novels are her masterpieces, and largely stem from her imagination. I think they represent some of the very best of 20th Century British literature.

Her earlier novels were more based on her own life experience - the best being the Booker winner Offshore, and The Bookshop.

Human Voices is based on Fitzgerald's time working at the BBC in London in World War Two.

On the face of it the novel is a comedy - an affectionate look at the chaos of running the BBC during wartime. But as ever with Fitzgerald there is more below the surface - something stranger and darker.

The BBC is wrestling with the balance between truth and a call to bend it in the name of patriotism. The Corporation still has a smack of the civil service about it, and it's easy to understand why some governments have pressured it to become an arm of the state.

But in Human Voices, the BBC managers have decided to prioritise truth over consolation, even though Britain is staring into the abyss when we join the action in 1940.

As in quite a lot of Fitzgerald's work, tone, character, and humour are more of a priority than plot, and if I had a criticism, Human Voices did lack a little narrative drive from time to time.

It's an important account though of a time when the BBC, as with the whole of Britain, was facing immense challenges. This is no pat tale of stiff upper lip coming good - Fitzgerald's characters are too flawed and complicated to be pigeon-holed. But it is a tribute to a kind of ramshackle Blitz Spirit - people carry on doing their jobs because frankly there was no alternative.

None of the staff are on the front line of course, but with London being bombed, and the BBC a potential target, there is an ever-present threat.

If not her best, Human Voices is still a fine novel, and the miracle of Fitzgerald is that at the age of 64, she was still yet to flex her full fictional muscles. This is a good staging post on the way to greatness.

[Kuszma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fura egy regény ez. Mármint regénynek fura – bizonyos értelemben nem is az. Persze vannak itt regénységre utaló jelek, elég, ha a figyelemreméltóan eleven karaktereket nézzük, akik kiválóan belakják a nekik rendelt teret. Ugyanakkor cselekedeteik nem állnak össze cselekménnyé, következésképp hiányzik a szövegből az ív, helyette jó adag esetlegességet kapunk. Jellemző, hogy Anne, akit még leginkább nevezhetnénk főszereplőnek, csak valahol a könyv felénél lép be a történetbe, holott ilyet rendes főszereplő nem csinál. Az ív hiánya persze mindenféle nehézséget okoz, amit Fitzgerald érzésem szerint nem mindig tud megoldali – itt van például a lezárás, ami ha innen nézem, bátor, viszont ha onnan nézem (és momentán onnan nézem), akkor erőltetett kísérlet arra, hogy véget vessen egy szövegnek, aminek amúgy eszében sincs véget érni.

A cselekményhiány meg a karakterek céltalan kószálása nagyjából annak tudható be, hogy Fitzgeraldot valójában nem az emberek érdeklik. Nem róluk akar írni, hanem a BBC-ről, erről a csodálatos intézményről, ami 1940 nehéz esztendejében is mindent elkövetett, hogy tartsa a lelket az országban. Hozzáteszem, ezzel együtt ez a kötet nem kézikönyv a rádiózás hőskoráról. A technikai részletek, a hírolvasók és műsorszerkesztők gyakorlati problémái csak jelzésszerűen jelennek meg, mintegy hangulatfestő elemként – mert a lényeg, igen, a hangulat. Az a „very british” gyámoltalan, mégis igen céltudatos flegma, ami lehetővé tette, hogy a BBC dolgozói még a bombák záporában is úgy tegyenek, mintha létezne normalitás. Ennek a hangulatnak a hamis pátosztól mentes átsugárzásában Penelope Fitzgerald nagyot alkot – amikor már egy büdös jelenetre sem rémlik majd ebből a könyvből, arra még akkor is emlékezni fogok, hogy BBC-snek lenni valami igazán cool dolog.

[Derek Driggs · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent fun, with all its wisdom and commentary sort of hidden in what appears to be a simple social comedy, just as Penelope Fitzgerald does best. Made more interesting because it was drawn from her own experiences working for the BBC during the war.

Something I do find I have a weakness for is remembering characters when five or so of them are introduced in the first few pages. If they get tangled that early on I have trouble differentiating throughout. I could presumably solve this if I would slow down a little, but I find myself more likely to slow down if I’ve already become attached to a character or plot line, which requires some degree of clarity early on.

This would make an excellent film, with its large personalities and love triangles and comedic muck-ups and quiet, sad truths.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

I remember in the weeks after 9/11 listening to WNYC, the local NYC public radio station. Their FM antenna was on the World Trade Center and it went to static immediately when the planes hit, and their studios were in lower Manhattan, so they had to broadcast out of another office uptown, sending their signal out from a tower somewhere in New Jersey. The voices sounded fuzzy and full of a sad confusion, and the regular music that filled the spaces between segments was no longer the usual bourgie pop but some quasi-atonal clarinet melody that seemed to pour salt on all the bad feelings. But still, I listened every free moment I had, to the point where it started to feel almost like a chore or a daily penance.

I hadn’t thought much about those days recently, but early on in this novel it all came back to me. About thirty pages in, the BBC’s Director of Programme Planning pulls the plug on a French general’s rant on live radio without telling anyone, the effect of which Fitzgerald describes like this:

For the past ten minutes there had been total silence on the Home network. The fifteen million listeners had heard nothing. But their reaction was not surprise so much as a kind of relief, the interruption of their programmes being exactly the kind of thing which everyone had expected from the moment war was declared, but which had failed to happen, holding the listeners’ attention in a supersaturated solution which had failed month by month to crystallize.

The circumstances are different—this is London during the blitz, when the possibility of a Nazi invasion seemed all but certain—but the sentiment is similar.

Human Voices tells the stories of a handful of people in the BBC’s broadcasting department in 1940, at the beginning of the Nazi blitz. But this is neither a pulse-pounding tale of survival nor a tragic drama of romance and loss, though there is certainly a dash of romance and loss tossed into these pages.

Instead, Human Voices chronicles these characters through the mundane activities of their daily lives, following them as perform the not-so-exciting tasks associated with producing radio—gathering recordings, juggling schedules, facing off with other divisions of the British government that want to commandeer the airwaves for their own purposes—and lead their lives in whatever small spaces remain outside of work and the war.

What I really came to love about this novel is how its characters find solace from the overwhelming stresses of air raids and the threat of imminent invasion in the humdrum of bureaucracy. There are very few conversations about the war in general, or global politics. The closest we get is the following conversation between Jeff Haggard, the BBC's Director of Programme Planning, and another administrator:

“The day the United States declare war on Nazi Germany, the Central and South American Republics will follow suit… Now Mr. Haggard, all of them are going to want representation at the BBC. That in turn means fifteen new sections … they’ll all of them want carpets, chairs, desks, typewriters adapted to the Spanish alphabet and steel filing cabinets….”

“I hadn’t thought of the position exactly in that way,” Jeff replied.

“I daresay you hadn’t, very few have. Decisions are made, as you know, with very little thought as to how they’re to be carried out.”

“You have my sympathy.”

“But what do you suggest I do?”

“Pray for a negotiated peace,” said Jeff.

“Now, Mr. Haggard, you don’t mean that, we all know you don’t mean half of what you say.”

“I don’t at all mean that it would be desirable. I’m simply saying that it’s the only solution for the problem of the steel filing cabinets.”

By filtering such large matters through lens of bureaucracy, Fitzgerald seems to be reminding us that the small events of our lives are the only way we really understand the significant events of the world around us, events that history books so glibly dissociate from the level of personal experience and put forth as definitive accounts. Here, Fitzgerald returns them to their proper place.

[Bettie · Rating 3 out of 5]

1. 4 Extra Debut. Wartime in Broadcasting House, and myriad hopes and fears come and go in the course of newsgathering. Read by Penelope Wilton.

2. Wartime in Broadcasting House sees a visit from a boozy French General with misguided words of hope.

3. Wartime in Broadcasting House. American reporters arrive from France, and odd living arrangements are made.

4. Wartime in Broadcasting House. We learn of Annie, her piano tuner Dad and her spirited first day.

5. Wartime in Broadcasting House. Annie's hard musical expertise wins her few friends among top brass.


Having just listened to Penelope Wilton read Fitzgerald's biography, authored by Hermione Lee, to an impeccable 5*, I was inordinately pleased to find that Wilton is narrating this!

In that biography it states that Fitzgerald pal-ed up with Penelope Lively; what a basketful of Pippas! I don't know about you but I miss the fact that the BBC building is ah but a Marie Celeste nowadays: the BBC have moved to other premises. I last saw the Shepherd's Bush building during Dr Who's 50th birtday stream of viewings.

3.5 The Blue Flower
TR The Bookshop
3* Human Voices
2.5 The Gate of Angels
3* The Beginning of Spring

[Lesley]

Perhaps the title offers a clue to how disjointed this novel is. There’s no real narrative arc other than the backdrop of the war as it intensifies; characters appear and disappear, it’s episodic, sporadic and anecdotal - but such is life so that’s allowed. Set in BBC Broadcasting House at the start of the Second World War, where the author worked during the Blitz, it’s a wonderfully rich insight into this complex and unique institution at a time of unique crisis. The mandate was to tell the truth (just imagine), which is seen as a sacred duty, albeit it served by an absurd body of eccentrics, cynics, idealists and lost souls. It’s scrappy, but alive with detail, wry humour and oddly moving moments. Also kind of unsatisfying, due to the lack of structure or plot, but would probably be worth re-reading now I know not to expect those, to enjoy the wit and observation instead of waiting for something to happen.

[Lobstergirl · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dull. Yet suddenly in the last few chapters of this tiny novel, a teenage girl no one knew was pregnant begins to give birth in the BBC auditorium (being used as a dorm for both sexes of employees during WWII); a precocious 16-year-old intern settles down with her 46-year-old boss (even though she has just told him, "There's two ways to be selfish. You can think too much about yourself, or you can think too little about others. You're selfish both ways."); and one of the directors is blown up by a bomb. Did all that make the book more interesting? Not really.

This joins my list of novels where hands are described according to whether they could play a piano, or not. "Annie had been keeping her hands under the table, but now she spread them out on the stiff-feeling tablecloth. They were pinkish and freckled, but delicate, not piano-player's hands, not indeed as practical as one would have expected, thin and tender." In reality all hands have the potential to play the piano, unless they have fewer than five fingers, are webbed, or are hoofs.

"If you can tell me where to get any more steel filing cabinets measuring up to our specifications, Mr Haggard, I'm prepared to go to bed with Hitler's grandmother." The novel needed more of that, I felt.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

“I prithee, | Remember I have done thee worthy service; | Told thee no lies, made thee no mistakings, served | Without or grudge or grumblings…”
— The Tempest I ii

If a novel can be termed ‘worthy’ it suggests that it deserves respect for its particular qualities, though not necessarily that it’s admirable or invites fondness. But describing it as ‘worthwhile’ implies that investment in terms of time, effort and consideration, and maybe even emotion, is its own reward.

How then to judge a story that, while supposedly merely focusing on a year in the life of a national institution and a handful of individuals working there, seems to address eternal human concerns such as what constitutes untruths, selfishness, injustice, and love, and which forty years after its publication (and itself forty years after the events it describes) remains not just relevant but as urgent as ever?

However fictional the novel’s characters patently are, the fact that the author actually worked at the BBC during the year in question gives the narrative the ring of authenticity. The closing references to Shakespeare’s The Tempest serve then as a metaphor for how fiction may reflect reality despite being, as Prospero says, “We are such stuff as dreams are made on.”

Throughout 1940, as Hitler’s armies spread over continental Europe and the US held back from involvement, Britain appeared to be alone in its opposition to Nazi invasion despite bombs raining down on its infrastructure and cities. The still fledgling BBC, founded as the British Broadcasting Company in October 1922, saw itself as a beacon of hope, proud of its independence even as it worked with government in the national interest. The author tells us that "as an institution they could not tell a lie, they were unique in the contrivances of gods and men since the Oracle of Delphi," and so

remained loyal to the truth, even when they stretched it a little to spare the feelings of their employees.

This – the principle of telling the truth – is one of the themes of Human Voices, the novel’s title itself taken from the phrase that the broadcasters’ remit was “scattering human voices into the darkness of Europe, in the certainty that more than half must be lost […] for the sake of the few that made their mark.” But even as the staff had truth as their guiding light they still told half-truths to each other and each even concealed truths from their own selves.

The author foregrounds four main characters, two men and two women. Sam Brooks, Recorded Programmes Director, is a perfectionist, an engineer in charge of recording and preserving voices and sounds, who surrounds himself with a coterie of female assistants generally known as the Seraglio. He is Epimetheus to Jeff Haggard’s Prometheus, the Director of Programme Planning and therefore responsible for future transmissions as Brooks preserves the past.

We get to know two of the female assistants in the Seraglio some depth, the half-French Lise Bernard (who, disappearing part way through the narrative, hides a truth about herself) and Annie Asra, daughter of a deceased piano tuner, who is more inclined to speak her mind and thus ruffle some feathers. The interaction as the individuals in this quartet reveal or conceal truths from each other is the apparent mainstay of Fitzgerald’s Human Voices, but the author herself is not above concealing and revealing as we observe the toing and froing in the BBC’s flagship, Broadcasting House.

And here is where a parallel with Shakespeare’s last play, hinted at but not explicit till the last chapter, looms large within the novel. Over the entrance of the building is placed a sculpture of Prospero and Ariel by the controversial artist Eric Gill, who in fact died in 1940. When Fitzgerald wrote this novel revelations regarding Gill’s sexual abuse had not been made public but he was already a known philanderer. Fitzgerald – knowingly, I believe – mixed in themes from Gill’s womanising, Prospero’s creating illusions in The Tempest, Miranda’s innocence combined with forthrightness, and the notion of Broadcasting House as an urban ocean liner (albeit with the “wrong” windows) subject to the tempest that was the Blitz. Meanwhile, as BH is itself threatened by parachute bombs, announcers wrestle with the problem of pronouncing their official name of “aerial torpedoes”.

The strength of much of Penelope Fitzgerald’s writing comes when she reveals a lot by saying relatively little, often by way of humour or a striking simile. “On the telephone [Haggard’s] voice dropped even lower, like a voice’s shadow” captures this character perfectly. Brook’s obsession as a recording engineer is transferring patterns, perfecting the skill of transforming sound “from air to wax, the kind of thing which through all the preceding centuries has been possible only to the bees.” Annie – perhaps modelled by Fitzgerald on herself – declares “perfect pitch is something you’re born with, like a sense of humour.”

Above all, this novel is a revelatory portrait of the BBC, its personnel and its workings during the war from an insider, expressed from a laconic more than a sardonic perspective; as with portraits it represents a moment in time rather than a complete narrative, a middle with no declared beginning, still less an end. I found it surprisingly moving despite not conforming to initial expectations.

[M. D. Hudson · Rating 5 out of 5]

So there I was, reading in bed, tears running down my face when a 46-year-old BBC manager twists a little ring out of a gold band from around a champagne bottle and a red currant and puts it on the finger of one of his subordinate employees, a teenage girl of 17. Was I crying over the looming disaster this was probably going to be? No, because in ways few books manage to convey, this was a love story. Not a Humbert Humbert criminal "love" story, but a real love story. I think I was crying because it was beautiful. And because I was...being manipulated? See page 96; I just reread it and got a lump. I don't lump easily!

So let me persist. Penelope Fitzgerald is one of the few novelists I can read without twisting myself into little knots of protest, sometimes disgust, always dissatisfaction. Ian McEwen, J. M. Coetzee, Anita Bookner and John Banville, and certainly Philip Roth, John Gardner (the "Grendel" guy) and Saul Bellow...books so often peopled by non-people. In general, I just don't care for this genre much anymore.

Part of the problem is me, probably. I have never been able to take adulthood seriously. A lot of Americans are like this, so we are told again and again, a basic inability to grow up, to stop grinning all the time. I'm like this - childish, not childlike, let me be clear! The grim business of life, attended to grimly without any joy or humor, life as a goal-oriented thing while we all whistle our way past the graveyard. Without joy, humor or even irony, why bother? Sure, when it is a matter of life and death - rescuing the drowning, brain surgery, winning the fight against the Nazis - I get that, I do. And it is not a matter of something like, say, running a business or a school or a library, does not have serious aspects - these places are important, they require a certain degree of seriousness for sure. But so much of the time, in my variegated experience of these places, I see adults hithering and thithering with furrowed brows attending to things that are not, despite the organizational context, serious at all. Much of it seems to consist of making sure that busyness is being conveyed, usually for the benefit of managers, who almost always got to be managers because their humorless, grim sense of purpose trumps...irony, playfulness, or anything resembling childlike (but not childish - managerial temper tantrums - and I've seen a few - are about as childish as you can get this side of age three). For instance, the Ian McEwen novels I have read completely succumb to this view - the characters are all the same, basically, like those Fisher-Price wooden people with round cylindrical bodies that slot into chairs, cars, boats, toilets, wherever the author needs to move them; the surface colors and an occasional hat are the only difference: Surgeon! Policeman! Grandma! Knife-wielding robber! Alcoholic poet! And they all get shuffled around the board game called LIFE. Ugh.

What does this have to do with Penelope Fitzgerald (PF from here on out) and me sobbing in bed over a champagne band-red currant ring placed on the finger of a far too young girl by a far too old man? I am not sure. But it might have something to do with the way PF manages to be ironic, even skeptical, perhaps even, eventually, hopeless, about her characters. Their absurdity is acknowledged, but so is their...seriousness? Dignity? Love? Capacity to be convincingly adult?

But "absurdity" is a tricky concept. Taken full on, absurdity leads us to Beckett and Godot and "I can't go on, I'll go" on and Sartre and Camus and the Shoulder to the Boulder of Sisyphus. Nothing wrong with that stuff - it is probably even true, truer than PF and her hopeless falling in love scenarios. And yet I resist - Camus and "There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide" struck me as profound when I was 22 or whatever. Now it strikes me as...something only a man could write. There's more to it than that. And most people don't commit suicide. Most people do go on; they even have babies! How they do this is PF's business as a novelist.

***

So let me quote some things, in the hopes of making some PF converts. Let's get the World Historical things out of the way first; Human Voices takes place in London during the German Blitz, in the main headquarters of the BBC ("The Corporation" as it is referred to, mostly). Fitzgerald always sort of drops you in the deep end at the beginning of her novels; she is not an easy read, but for excellent reasons, I think (more on that elsewhere). Dropped into a busy, hectic, often chaotic and sometimes hilariously inefficient organization staffed by the middle aged and the very young, everybody else off fighting. The bureaucracy is vast and complicated, hemmed in by often ludicrous protocol, a touchy hierarchy system made at the molecular level (to some extent because of the English class system), wartime shortages and the usual human vanity, self-interest and, usually when you least expect it, big-heartedness, intelligence and courage. And yes, PF actually worked at the BBC during World War II, so the details are presumably spot-on and it is the details that PF is so good at employing to set scenes without the clumsy scene-setting so often afflicting novels (especially ones set in the historical past).

It isn't until page 17 you get the BBC's mission statement (awful phrase, but if all corporate/institutional mission statements were written like this, what a wonderful world it would be). Starting off this excerpt are the two principle male characters, BBC management, Jeffrey Haggard and his subordinate Sam Moore:

"'Sam, I went to a meeting to-day."

'What about?'

'It was about the use of recordings in news bulletins.'

'Why wasn't I asked?'

But Sam was never asked to meetings.

'We had two Directors and three Ministries - War, Information, Supply. They'd called it, quite genuinely I think, in the interests of truth.'

The word made its mark. Broadcasting House was in fact dedicated to the strangest project of the war, or of any war, that is, telling the truth. Without prompting, the BBC had decided that truth was more important than consolation, and, in the long run, would be more effective. And yet there was no guarantee of this. Truth ensures trust, but not victory, or even happiness. But the BBC had clung tenaciously to its first notion, droning quietly on, at intervals from dawn to midnight, telling, as far as possible, exactly what happened. An idea so unfamiliar was bound to upset many of the other authorities, but they had got used to it little by little, and the listeners had always expected it.

'The object of the meeting was to cut down the number of recordings in news transmissions - in the interests of truth, as they said. The direct human voice must be used whenever we can manage it - if not, the public must be clearly told what they've been listening to - the programme must be announced as recorded, that is, Not Quite Fresh.'" (p. 17)

In this era of fake news, isn't this just - stirring - or something? It stirred me plenty - "the direct human voice." A recorded church bell is not the same as one being directly broadcast, not as true. Not Quite Fresh! (PF's capitalization). Who bothers with such distinctions nowadays? As much as I dislike Greatest Generation cant and cheap hagiography, I think I am prepared to let this bit about the BBC ascend to the pantheon. Maybe all institutions are not, as I think Pascal says somewhere, evil.

Here is another passage that impressed me. French General Pinard has come over from the battlefields of Falling France to broadcast to the British people; he's a hero of the last war (sort of like General Petain, who became a Nazi collaborator; in a way, Pinard might be an alternate universe Petain). Moments before his broadcast, this:

"'He won't wear headphones,' the Talks Producer told Jeff. 'It seems he doesn't like them. He prefers to go ahead on a hand cue.'

'I don't think we should grudge him anything.'

The canteen's brandy, Martell 2 Star, left over from Christmas, was brought out. The General raised his hand in a gesture of mile, but emphatic, refusal. That meant that no-one could have any - a disappointment to everybody except Talks, whose allocation for the month had already run out. The brandy would now do for the Minister of Coastal Defence, due later that evening. But these considerations faded as the General's presence was felt. He waited in immaculate dignity. Behind him lay France's broken armies." (p. 29)

This is just masterful - it is even a pleasure to type it out. Note the fussy wartime allocation concerns and thwarted desires (rationed brandy, Martell 2 Star no less), the simmering hope in the General's "presence" and "immaculate dignity" and then, at the very end, the absolute seriousness of the on-going calamity of "France's broken armies." Pinard's broadcast is not what everybody expected; but I will not spoil that here, but it seems France's generals were broken too.

These moments are about as close to a direct wartime "statement" PF allows herself. In the following passage - a passage I love so much it hurts - the war is again addressed, ironically, yet somehow touchingly. Annie is a BBC employee who is lodging with Vi Simmons, a co-worker, and the Simmons family, mom, dad and a bunch of little boys constantly running around machinegunning guests or each other or being sailors afloat after being torpedoed in the cabbage beds (the military ardor of little boys far too young to fight is not belabored; but the fact they appear is another one of PF's methods to show the permanence, the inescapability, of our human folly):

"Annie settled in easily with the Simmons. She gave no feeling of upset, rather of solidity and peace. Vi loved her mother, but was too much like her not to get irritated after fifteen minutes. She lent a hand whenever she was at home, but in her own way. To Annie, who had been reared by her widowed father, and brought to her present excellent state of health entirely on fish and chips and tins, there was a charm in helping Mrs. Simmons around the garden and kitchen. It was unpatriotic now not to sort the rubbish into pigfood, henfood, tinfoil (out of which, it seemed, battleships could be partly made), paper, cardboard and rags. At the same time Mr Simmons worked late at the shop, sorting the coupons from the customers' ration books. The Nation defended itself by counting large numbers of small things into separate containers. But beyond this there wee the old repetitive tasks of the seasons, the parts which, in the end, seem greater than the whole. Annie sat on the back doorstep and shelled peas with Mrs Simmons. She had never done it before." (p. 78).

Okay, it's not perfect - the second sentence seems to leading, too direct; Annie comes across this way via the descriptions and bits of dialogue, so such captioning is not required. But the rest of it is...dare I say sublime? Why is it that after the lovely "pigfood, henfood, tinfoil (out of which, it seemed, battleships could be partly made)..." the last sentence ("She had never done it before.") tears me up so? Even if I am just a victim of sentimentality, how can anybody not admire the skill here, the so important one-word-after-another aspect of PF's writing? What novel is it you like better? I want to ask all ye Goodreads one-and-two-star PF reviewers out there.

***

Some reviewers complain that it is difficult to keep people straight; the same character will interchangeably be referred to by his title (sometimes abbreviated, sometimes not), his surname or his given name, depending on who is talking to him. Yes, this does present an obstacle and makes it harder to read overall. But for the attentive reader, the affect this has on the whole novel is important and necessary; PF is able to shift locations and relationships without a bunch of nasty scene-setting and prop-moving that afflict the typical novel. And it also makes the reader more of a participant, rather than...a person reading a novel. Her ability to achieve this full emersion reading experience without resorting to anything obvious is just brilliant, I say.

I am a sloppy fast reader of novels. Partially because I am a sloppy reader, but also because most novels don't deserve much care in reading. Human Voices does deserve such care, and I found myself again and again, uncharacteristically, slowing down, even re-reading full passages. It is well worth the effort.


***

Just to get it out of the way: I don't care for the ending. The phone call from the Greek restaurant seems too out-of-character for the characters, even if newly-smitten. The deus-ex-machina of German ordnance too much like Evelyn Waugh's dreadful Sword of Honour trilogy.

But the book is filled with other endings, other departures that work far better than the actual ending. One of the main characters, Vi Simmons (the one whose mother is shelling peas with Annie) drifts off halfway through and turns out not to be a main character at all. Here she goes:

"Vi wrote to say that her wedding day was fixed, she was going up to Liverpool some time in September to marry Chris and to be his till the end of Life's Story. She wished she'd been able to invite them all, but they'd have a reunion after the war when the lights went up again, they must all swear to make a note of it, August the 30th by the Edith Cavell statue off Trafalgar Square, the side marked Fidelity. The letter did not sound quite like the Vi they had known, and made her seem farther away." (p. 103)

If you love the book as much as I do, Vi's remoteness here is heartbreaking. Not death or disaster, but another end of things, presented without fuss or drama and all the more sad for it. World War II or high school, isn't this the way we all drift? Everybody leaves; the war can't last forever (or high school for those of us lucky enough to have missed the Blitz). Important people move far away all the time, even in peacetime. How to convey this without sentimentality, without over-doing it? That passage does it.

So who was the hero? The Blitz-crossed lovers? The grave manager with the ruined face? Spoiler alert: the more I think about it, the more I am convinced the "hero" is one of the most unappealing characters, a dull, annoying, weepy (but pretty) young woman without a thought in her head except for her boyfriend. She gets pregnant (not by the boyfriend) and gives birth, partially, in the BBC auditorium (which has been converted to a dormitory for the employees, so many who have been bombed out of their homes). She's unpleasant, probably not outright stupid, but utterly devoid of any interests outside of her own and yet she might just represent...life. The Germans are dropping bombs, the beaches are being prepared for invasion, the airwaves are crackling with wartime disasters and last-ditch instructions, but this unpleasant woman is the one doing the only real task for humanity. There is a similar character in PF's first novel "The Golden Child." In both novels, said character is only in a few pages here and there, hardly "main character" by any such crude metric. And yet in a way not even The Battle of Britain can do, this character and birth itself may be the real center of the whole catastrophe. For all the last ditch heroics and brave broadcasts, confronted with this most primordial of human events, the dithering and grasping for inessentials of the male characters (who is responsible for cleaning the cot on which the birthing began?) is hilarious.

Babies? Maybe? I don't know. Maybe all the characters in her books are heroes; most of them have aspects of being villains too. Maybe somebody should write a Ph.D. dissertation on it. Maybe I have a Penelope Fitzgerald problem. Maybe she is engaged in a kind of gross sentimentality that is disguised cleverly with irony and "warmth" designed to fool immature readers like me. J. D. Salinger's Glass family comes to mind; but even if I am being fooled, I still admire (and respect) the skill. In a much cruder way, Sherlock Holmes and "Lord of the Rings" do the same thing. I've shed so many of my literary favorites (Holmes, LOTR), but I just can't get over Penelope Fitzgerald, thank God.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

Penelope Fitzgerald worked at the BBC during the Blitz, and drew upon her experiences for this novel. I have a weakness for WWII stories, so I had high hopes for this when I first read it sometime around 2000 -- and of course one only mentions high hopes if they end up being dashed. I can kind of see why I disliked it the first time around. I latched on to Vi, the most likable of the young women who works in the Department of Recorded Programs, as the main character, but then she's abruptly dropped from the narrative a bit over half way through, which is in fact a little maddening. This time somehow I was accepting that the book is essentially a collection of carefully understated wartime sketches, with some vividly drawn recurring characters, with the BBC itself being the main focus. I just appreciated the evocation of the wartime atmosphere, and the mostly small, sometimes funny, sometimes painful, moments that were just so revelatory of the time and place.

[JacquiWine · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 Stars

First published in 1980, Human Voices was Penelope Fitzgerald’s fourth novel, a story set largely within the confines of the BBC during the London Blitz. Like both its predecessors (The Bookshop and Offshore), Human Voices was inspired by experiences from Fitzgerald’s own life as she worked for the Corporation while WWII was underway.

Over the course of this novel, Fitzgerald paints a vivid picture of life at the BBC, complete with all its foibles and idiosyncrasies. She is particularly adept at capturing the atmosphere within the walls of Broadcasting House, highlighting the dynamics between various employees and departments along the way. In its infinite wisdom, The BBC has decided that ‘truth is more important than consolation’, especially in the long run; and so its role, as far as possible, must be to inform the nation about important developments in the world, irrespective of the views of other authorities. By the spring of 1940, the organisation is beginning to feel the effects of the war, the mood turning to one of urgency and mild anxiety. There is a fair amount of making do and getting on with the job as best one can.

To read my review, please click here:

https://jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2017...

[Elena Sala · Rating 4 out of 5]

Human Voices, Fitzgerald's fourth novel is a light, funny and accurate recreation of the BBC in wartime. But aside from the comedy, there is a love story - silent, hopeless, perpetual (a theme which will become persistent in her fiction)-, a sense of danger and anguish, a meditation on truth and a sort of wistful remembrance of her younger self.
Fitzgerald started to work at the BBC in December 1940 so she had a first hand experience of what it was like working there during the Blitz. She used to say that she tried very hard to disguise everyone in the novel, but apparently, many of the characters are recognizable figures. However, this is not a short history of the BBC at all. The BBC is just a setting which suits her because she felt it hovered between the absurd and the heroic, precisely what she needed for the stories she wanted to tell.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an intensely British novel, haha! I really had no clue what was going on for the first 40 pages or so and then it clicked into place. It's a very understated novel, but funny and clever, too. I finally felt most like I understood and enjoyed Annie, Jeff, and Vi's family as characters most. I love the BBC-in-wartime setting. It was chaotic but also somehow romantic. I'd like to read this again. I think I'd enjoy it much more in subsequent readings because I'd be more oriented to it. I've been wanting to read Penelope Fitzgerald's novels for ages after loving the biography she wrote of her remarkable father and uncles. Thank you Dominika for the buddy read! Can't wait to chat!

[Girish Gowda · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reading, in general, has been quite unwieldy at the moment and this novel grated me on almost every page. My first Fitzgerald, and the lack of a central character or themes but depending primarily on caustic wit and first hand observations to tell the story of BBC and the role it played during the Blitz fell flat. The snippets shared here have the quality of the exercised part of an otherwise great novel; parts that are edited out that creates a novel from the stuff that's weighing it down. Unfortunately this novel is full of it. I feel like the actual novel with the best bits are hidden away somewhere.