Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read.

Start by marking “The Golden Child” as Want to Read:

Other editions

Enlarge cover

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Open Preview

The Golden Child

Penelope Fitzgerald

3.55 · Rating details · 608 ratings · 94 reviews

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 ...more

Get A Copy

Paperback, 189 pages

Published September 15th 1999 by Mariner Books (first published 1977)

More Details... Edit Details

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Reader Q&A

To ask other readers questions about The Golden Child, please sign up.

Be the first to ask a question about The Golden Child

Lists with This Book

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg

Behind the Scenes at the Museums

135 books — 56 voters

More lists with this book...

Community Reviews

Showing 1-30

Average rating 3.55 ·

Rating details

· 608 ratings · 94 reviews

More filters

Sort order

Start your review of The Golden Child

Feb 25, 2021 Fionnuala added it · review of another edition

Shelves: penelope-fitzgerald

For a mystery story that was written simply to entertain her terminally ill husband, Penelope Fitzgerald's first novel is better than you might expect. The story is set in the British Museum in the 1970s, but not in the public spaces we are familiar with. Instead, we are taken into the back rooms of the museum, the offices and work spaces and store rooms that the public never sees. The plot, related to an exhibition of a mummified royal child in the style of Tutankhamen, hangs together fairly we For a mystery story that was written simply to entertain her terminally ill husband, Penelope Fitzgerald's first novel is better than you might expect. The story is set in the British Museum in the 1970s, but not in the public spaces we are familiar with. Instead, we are taken into the back rooms of the museum, the offices and work spaces and store rooms that the public never sees. The plot, related to an exhibition of a mummified royal child in the style of Tutankhamen, hangs together fairly well, and as in a classic mystery, the nobler characters all warm to each other on sight, and the less noble ones dislike the noble ones intensely. Then there are a few dark horses so that the murderer gets to remain a mystery to the reader until almost the end.

Back rooms, places the public never see, are a feature of many of Fitzgerald's books (view spoiler) I feel her back room locations are linked with her dislike of pomp and pretension—her leading characters are nearly always modest and humble individuals (view spoiler) though often with an unexpected streak of rebelliousness. The main character of The Golden Child is very unpretentious, not at all bothered by the fact that other museum employees continually remind him that he's very junior. He is content (view spoiler) because he likes his job planning the layout for exhibitions, although he is bothered that the public have to queue for so long, often in the rain and wind, to visit them.

The story takes an odd turning when Waring-Smith, for that is the main character's name (view spoiler) is sent off on a package holiday to Moscow for a slightly absurd plot reason. I suspected the real reason might have been to give Fitzgerald's husband an opportunity to recall similar package trips they'd made together (view spoiler).

The sites Waring-Smith visits in Moscow are mostly those that were open to tourists in the Soviet era, places like the Pushkin Museum, Lenin's tomb, the State Circus and the Space Pavilion, all of which must have featured on the Fitzgeralds' own package holidays, as the details sound very realistic. Waring-Smith discovers that in Moscow, people have to queue just as much as the patrons of the Museum in London, Six hours’ wait for the Lenin Mausoleum, three or four for the Pushkin. [People] must wait another eternity to get back their hats and coats which were compulsorily deposited; their feet were trampled, ribs broken. In Lenin’s words, what was to be done?

The theme of people being seduced into going to see what they had been told was worth seeing, whether the mummy of Lenin in Moscow or the mummy of the Golden Child in London, is at the heart of this entire book in a way, because Waring-Smith uncovers more and more nefarious secrets associated not only with the running of the museum but with the mummified royal child inside its golden covering inside its golden sarcophagus inside its glass exhibition box, itself like a series of (view spoiler). ...more

flag 64 likes · Like · see review

Jun 03, 2020 Violet wells rated it did not like it

It's always interesting to read a writer's first novel. Usually all the themes and some of the characters of future books are clumsily present in embryo form. And it's not the case to have great expectations. But I've never read a novel by an esteemed author with less artistry than this. It's like she wrote it in a month for either a joke or money. It's a pastiche of the murder mystery genre. To begin with it seems like it might be entertaining. An exhibition of ancient world tomb artefacts with ...more

flag 54 likes · Like · see review

Jul 22, 2020 Jean-Luke rated it liked it · review of another edition

Penelope Fitzgerald writes a whodunit. Except I didn't know it was going to be a whodunit, because having read a fair share of Fitzgerald I figured I knew what to expect and would skip the much despised back cover book summary. The initial chapters reminded me of Mad Men set in a museum, without all the screwing. Maybe more like Desk Set. Reminiscent of Human Voices, but much more tightly plotted, and unlike HV it doesn't constantly refer to people by abbreviations of their positions--DD(S), DDP ...more

flag 34 likes · Like · see review

Jul 06, 2018 Teresa rated it it was ok · review of another edition

If you’re old enough, you will remember the King Tut craze. (And the Steve Martin song inspired by it.) I was a junior in high school when we were taken on school buses to stand in line for hours, snapping photos of each other, as well as of a fake pyramid and a painted “Nile River” that wound around the outside of the museum, until we could file past the relics, which I’m guessing we couldn’t take photos of since I have none. The waiting took hours longer than seeing the actual exhibit, but a l ...more

flag 26 likes · Like · see review

Sep 26, 2016 Fiona rated it it was ok

Shelves: just-not-for-me, general-fiction

This is the second of Fitzgerald's books I've read and I didn't enjoy it any more than the first. To me, she tries to write in a similar style to Jane Gardam but it just doesn't work for me. I forced myself to read more than I wanted to and there's no point in that. This sort of twee English eccentricity just becomes annoying after a while. ...more

flag 6 likes · Like · see review

Jul 27, 2018 Jennifer Kepesh rated it really liked it

I think that any absurd book is going to be loved or hated, and I have certainly hated my share of absurd books (notably, A Confederacy of Dunces, and The Sellout, neither of which I could finish because they were far too puerile for me.) Well this book is completely absurd,, and I thought it was hilarious and it endeared me even more to Penelope Fitzgerald. One thing I love about this book is that, in the middle of all its nuttiness, there is the truth of the way that a big museum is--that almo ...more

flag 5 likes · Like · see review

Sep 22, 2012 Ann Herendeen rated it really liked it

Shelves: read-recently

I had not heard of Penelope Fitzgerald (freely confessing my appalling American ignorance here) when I started reading The Golden Child. It took me a while to "understand" what I was reading: the first novel (from 1977) of a Booker Prize-winning novelist. At first it seemed to be an odd, old-fashioned whodunnit. As I read, I began to see a little more of what Fitzgerald was doing--telling a story that has elements of mystery and satire, and presented from the original, idiosyncratic point of vie I had not heard of Penelope Fitzgerald (freely confessing my appalling American ignorance here) when I started reading The Golden Child. It took me a while to "understand" what I was reading: the first novel (from 1977) of a Booker Prize-winning novelist. At first it seemed to be an odd, old-fashioned whodunnit. As I read, I began to see a little more of what Fitzgerald was doing--telling a story that has elements of mystery and satire, and presented from the original, idiosyncratic point of view of a gifted writer. There's the parody of museum culture and the slightly surreal take on Cold War politics, perhaps the part of the story that seems most dated today, although still enjoyable and fascinating, as a look at recent history.

What is most striking is Fitzgerald's economic prose style. The amount of story that she manages to tell in very few words is astonishing. I read this book during my recent conversion back from e-readers to print, and I was surprised every time I turned a page--it felt as if I had absorbed a whole chapter's worth of story in just two pages of comfortably medium-size print. This is why writers win prestigious awards. I don't believe this kind of style can be taught, although, never having taken any writing classes, I am obviously making a number of dubious assumptions here.

As a writer, I found this book top-notch from the standpoint of style. I want to reread it slowly and carefully, to learn by example how to compress my natural wordiness into something more concentrated; not to copy or imitate, but to develop my own skills. And I want to read some of Fitzgerald's later works, to see her style at its best.

As a reader, I did find the story a bit thin, but it is a first novel. Because I work in a museum that is a bit like the American counterpart of the setting, a slightly disguised British Museum, I very much enjoyed the look behind the scenes of museum culture and blockbuster exhibitions, especially remembering the King Tut exhibition that was at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC around the time The Golden Child is set. Museum life and culture have changed a great deal since the late 1970s with the adoption of computers and other modern technology, but the politics of large not-for-profit institutions changes very, very slowly, and a lot of what Fitzgerald writes about here is still true in spirit, if not always literally.

For readers new to Fitzgerald, I would suggest starting with later books that other readers have recommended. But if you already know her work and haven't read this, it's still an amusing, clever and slyly humorous work that won't disappoint reasonable expectations.
...more

flag 4 likes · Like · see review

Mar 28, 2013 Lynda rated it liked it

Shelves: kindle, fiction

This was Fitzgerald's first novel and it shows, I think. Though many of the hallmarks of her craft are in evidence there is little of the masterly restraint of her more mature novels. Nonetheless there is much to enjoy. The setting is a thinly disguised British Museum which is holding an exhibition of Garamantian artefacts which includes the Golden Child. As the exhibition opens to massive public interest a series of mysterious events begins to unfold. As usual Fitzgerald draws her characters wi ...more

flag 4 likes · Like · see review

Jan 31, 2010 Ali rated it it was amazing

I have only read two Penelope Fitzgerald novels before, and both were strange and quirky but enjoyable. Of the three that I have now read, this was definitely my favourite. It is odd and quirky, very funny in parts, and utterly absorbing.

In this story of the exhibtion of The Golden Child - Fitzgerald is poking gentle fun at the world of museum exhibitions. As the characters and situations she has created in this novel are eccentric and often absurd, but entirely delightful for all that. The poor ...more

flag 4 likes · Like · see review

Sep 10, 2020 Mark rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2020-fiction

The Golden Child is a brisk romp through a light mystery/thriller plot with finely-tuned, authentic characters, some of whom admittedly die as the plot thickens. The protagonist is an immediately likable, lower-level worker at the British Museum, Waring Smith, whose life seems driven and shaped by external forces around him, but who does finally rise to a more decisive demeanor when the denouement arrives.

I came to read The Golden Child, Penelope Fitzgerald’s first novel, after already reading s The Golden Child is a brisk romp through a light mystery/thriller plot with finely-tuned, authentic characters, some of whom admittedly die as the plot thickens. The protagonist is an immediately likable, lower-level worker at the British Museum, Waring Smith, whose life seems driven and shaped by external forces around him, but who does finally rise to a more decisive demeanor when the denouement arrives.

I came to read The Golden Child, Penelope Fitzgerald’s first novel, after already reading several of her other novels. If she was casting about for ultimate “her voice” in this first novel, then I must say it had the effect of pointing her in a different direction altogether, for none of her later novels are anything like The Golden Child. The elegant prose—to become her signature style later—is already evident, as is her ability to create realistic, credible characters. But whereas later novels are more serious and more dramatic, The Golden Child is almost a caper.

The story’s action plays out around a highly-popular museum exhibit called “The Golden Child,” which is the major item in a collection of relics from an ancient African civilization called Garamantia. While Garamantia exists, The Golden Child exhibit is fictitious, modeled by Fitzgerald on the world-famous Tutankhamun exhibition shown by the museum in 1972. But there is something mysterious about The Golden Child; it is even suspected to be the cause of sinister, inexplicable happenings. Not only museum administrators, but other experts all appear to be interested in examining the exhibit closely.

Waring Smith comes close to being garroted in the museum, but is then surprisingly sent to Moscow on an unclear mission related to authenticating the exhibit. He fails in this mission, but gathers more suspicious information. While Smith is in Russia, an “accidental” death of the museum’s long-time patron complicates the plot. Smith returns, and another violent death occurs.

Meanwhile, the highest officials of the museum appear to be part of some conspiracy related to the exhibit and the two deaths. Smith, with the help of another museum coworker, begins to untangle the mystery of the exhibit and the conspiracy. Fitzgerald does a nice job of cleverly tying up loose ends, and late plot twists will keep readers gripped to the end. The handful of sinister, shady figures are nicely balanced with several comic characters that make up the story.

All in all, this is an entertaining book, and a clear indication that Fitzgerald would go on to become one of Britain’s best-loved authors.

[Note—This reader has also reviewed the following by the same author: The Bookshop, Offshore, The Beginning of Spring, Human Voices, and The Blue Flower.] ...more

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

May 22, 2018 JacquiWine rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Regular readers of my blog may well be aware of my fondness for the work of Penelope Fitzgerald. I’ve been making my way through her novels, not always in order of publication, over the past few years. The Golden Child (1977) was her first novel, a hugely entertaining tale of internal politics, mystery and mayhem, all set amid the most British of institutions, a prestigious London museum.

The museum in question, a thinly veiled version of the British Museum, is hosting an exhibition of precious t ...more

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Jul 26, 2018 Kaion rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: humor

Utterly, delightfully absurd.

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Mar 24, 2022 Elizabeth rated it it was amazing

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Mar 30, 2022 Eldonfoil TH*E Whatever Champion rated it it was ok

Shelves: united-kingdom

fun premise, but fairly dull; more like a half-baked, mystery-genre fiction than literature; back to Season 8 of Dalziel & Pascoe now.

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Apr 18, 2017 Leslie rated it liked it

Shelves: 2017, 20th-century-fiction

An odd little book, about an exhibition at a thinly disguised British Museum. Very much of its time and not without its small pleasures.

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Jan 08, 2019 Matt Williams rated it really liked it · review of another edition

The Golden Child is two novels for the price of one. You have the first novel, a scorching satire of bureaucracy and hierarchy, and the sort of toxic humanity that's the same today as it was when it was written in 1977. It's full of fun jokes, gallows humor, perfectly-captured exasperation, and is really quite well-written. Our protagonist, a hapless minor functionary at a museum exhibiting a King-Tut-inspired exhibition of archaeological finds from a fictional country, is subject to an almost p ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Feb 28, 2019 Jackie rated it did not like it

I skipped lots, it couldn’t keep me interested. Everyone had a stupid name, and I can’t relate to stupid names, so it all seemed a bit put on.....felt like she tried very hard to name everyone oddly. It did have humour and at times it made me smile. I felt it was all absurd.....plus who doesn’t know or think that half the stuff on display in museums are fake ones and replicas?

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Aug 23, 2017 Thomas added it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, 2017

Well ... she got better. Will likely only appeal to the Fitzgerald completist.

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Aug 10, 2019 Adam Stevenson rated it really liked it

‘The Golden Child’ was Penelope Fitzgerald’s first book and is unlike all her others. For a start, it has an ending. This is not a spare evocation of time, place and character like her other novels but more a full-throttled comic mystery.

It might be the longest of her novels, weighing in at a whopping two hundred pages, apparently it used to be longer with more sub-plots and characters but her editor advised her to trim it down. As such, it reminds me most of Edmund Crispin’s Gervase Fen mysteri ‘The Golden Child’ was Penelope Fitzgerald’s first book and is unlike all her others. For a start, it has an ending. This is not a spare evocation of time, place and character like her other novels but more a full-throttled comic mystery.

It might be the longest of her novels, weighing in at a whopping two hundred pages, apparently it used to be longer with more sub-plots and characters but her editor advised her to trim it down. As such, it reminds me most of Edmund Crispin’s Gervase Fen mysteries. Fitzgerald originally planned to write other mysteries with the Dr Untermensch character but put them away to write ‘The Bookshop’ instead, and I’m glad she did because as fun as this is, that book was unique and wonderful, as well as many of her subsequent works.

The plot surrounds an un-named but obvious British Museum as it launches an exhibition about the Golden Child, funeral offerings created for the child ruler of a mysterious African country called Garamantia (ruler: Crown Princes Rasselas). It’s a thinly veiled pastiche of the Tutankhamun craze from a few years earlier, complete with roguish but now ageing discoverer and curse. We learn about what the Golden Child is by reading bits of primary school essays on the subject.

The book is especially good at setting the atmosphere of the museum, bracing itself for the influx of visitors like a ship bracing for a particularly large wave. It describes the people crammed in lines to see something they have been brainwashed into thinking important and how the act of queuing and going to see the exhibition is probably more important to them than the exhibition itself. This later become’s a key part of the antagonist’s motivation.

The mystery was well plotted, mysterious as it happened but plain, simple and clear after it had been explained with lots of little clues and incidental details that added to the whole, Fitzgerald could probably have made a living with literate mysteries if she wanted.

As such, this is a very entertaining and funny mystery with a lot of great details, funny lines and exaggerated characters and although I can’t think of much to say about it, I enjoyed it very much. ...more

flag Like · see review

Jul 14, 2017 Vel Veeter rated it liked it

This is not based on the weird ass Eddie Murphy movie from the mid 80s with that weird haunted sword or pipe or whatever it was.

Instead this is a kind of mystery, kind of comedy of manners taking place in a Natural History museum the night before a huge new opening. In this novel, several key figures circulate around the opening of a new exhibit that will introduce the world to the collected findings about an ancient civilization: Garamantia.

It has old burial vessels, pots, a strange hieroglyphi ...more

flag Like · see review

Jan 24, 2020 David rated it liked it · review of another edition

It was quite interesting to read Penelope Fitzgerald's first novel from 1977 having read seven of her later books. Far fetched but fun, a typically short novel that descends into a combination of thriller and farce. A comedy mystery with some good characterisation along the way. The setting is brilliant, a big London museum with all the bitchiness behind the scenes. A big fictional exhibition is taking place in midwinter with thousands turning up to queue in the cold. See what I mean about far f ...more

flag Like · see review

Aug 21, 2017 Tiffany rated it really liked it

This book started off a bit slow for me but toward the middle and end the pace picked up significantly and I couldn't put it down. It is my 4th favorite of her novels that I've read. Not because the characters will be particularly memorable for me but because of the overall feeling I sustained while reading it: a sort of pervading bemusement mixed with concern for the put-upon protagonist, and, in the end, a huzzah for his success (of sorts). In the "About the Author" bit at the end of this book ...more

flag Like · see review

Jun 08, 2021 John Purcell rated it liked it · review of another edition

The Golden Child was Booker winner Penelope Fitzgerald's first novel, written in her late fifties to entertain her dying husband. So the story goes. It is a comedy according to the praise on the cover, but don't come looking for laughs. I found it rather tedious and only finished it due to some strange unexplainable desire for closure. Something in the way it was written reminded me of Russell Hoban's Kleinzeit, but sadly not enough to lift it out of the doldrums. First novels often give away se ...more

flag Like · see review

Jan 21, 2019 Ray rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2019-european-reading-challenge, 2019-cloak-and-dagger-challenge, 2019-ninja-book-box-challenge, 52booksin52weeks

Interesting. I felt like the writer was trying to convey some of the fanfare and commercialism of the traveling museum exhibits, such as Tutankhamen. This book, explores through a small golden infant pharoahs and the treasures found in his tomb. When the museum exhibit is loaned to a British museum, murder ensues, and a young in-experienced museum clerk is sent on a mysterious mission to Russia.
It was an entertaining read, but also somewhat informational, because I had never really even though ...more

flag Like · see review

Jul 10, 2017 Sep rated it really liked it

The plot revolves around (and around) a museum that has on exhibit a long dead royal child and all of his grave goods. The boy's tomb was discovered years earlier and has been in the Garamantian museum ever since. As the story begins it is on loan to a museum that is suspiciously similar to the British Museum in London.

Waring Smith, a young employee, is the most likely hero. It is his adventures the reader tends to follow. Murder and deception are riff.

Written in the in the 1970s, TGC is a joyf ...more

flag Like · see review

Apr 10, 2020 Banbury rated it liked it

Perhaps a bit dated, yet this book is so different, so quirky, it is worth reading. It plays on (and with) literary conventions. For example, there is a send-up of the hero's ability to feel the truth of the situation, even before the facts are apparent: "A physical sensation like the thawing of ice, or the melting down of gold, warned him that the worst of his troubles were over." That word "warned" is priceless, especially in a simile about gold. ...more

flag Like · see review

Oct 20, 2020 Sharon rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: books-i-own

This is the first work of fiction that Penelope Fitzgerald wrote. It's very well written, of course, and a very funny story as well as shining a light on the staff and management behind the scenes of a national museum. I enjoyed it a lot, but I am giving it 4 stars because it isn't quite up there in breath taking quality as some of her others, in my opinion. Anybody considering reading this book shouldn't let this put them off, this is an excellent first book. ...more

flag Like · see review

Jan 23, 2021 Banuta rated it liked it

I'm a big P. Fitzgerald fan, but right now I'll say her later work is better. Nevertheless, her ability to create an entire world and stuff it full of whimsy is strongly represented here, with characters named Professor Untermensch and Jones Jones. She also gives a great and accurate glimpse of Soviet Russia. It's the random murders that undermine the story for me; they're not believable and are pure slapstick. ...more

flag Like · see review

May 05, 2022 Benjamin Kahn rated it liked it · review of another edition

This book was very enjoyable for the most part, quite amusing, but it took a bit of a serious turn during the climax which gave it a tone quite different than that which Fitzgerald has used throughout. Without that, I would have given it four stars, but I really felt that the way the climax was written was enough at odds with the general feeling of the book that it left me feeling a little disappointed. Generally a very good book, with a disappointing finish.

flag Like · see review

Aug 08, 2019 Bridget Palmer rated it it was ok

Slight, simple, fusty whodunit discovered cleaning out bookshelves. I began reading mistakenly thinking it was going to be a novel about Egypt and kept reading for its quirky English humor skewering over-hyped exhibitions, museum politics, upper class Brits, and FOMO on the part of the museum going public. Best: terribly understated digs. Worst: so much to read, so little time...

flag Like · see review

« previous 1 2 3 next »

new topic
Discuss This Book

topics	posts	views	last activity
Goodreads Librari...: please add alternative cover edition	2	15	Feb 04, 2020 07:05PM

Readers also enjoyed

See similar books…

Genres

Fiction

47 users

Mystery

29 users

European Literature > British Literature

8 users

Literature

7 users

Literary Fiction

5 users

Art

3 users

Historical > Historical Fiction

3 users

Contemporary

3 users

Cultural > Russia

2 users

Literature > 20th Century

2 users

See top shelves…

About Penelope Fitzgerald

Penelope Fitzgerald

558 followers

Penelope Fitzgerald was an English novelist, poet, essayist and biographer. In 2008, The Times included her in a list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945". In 2012, The Observer named her final novel, The Blue Flower, as one of "the ten best historical novels".

Fitzgerald was the author of nine novels. Her novel Offshore was the winner of the Booker Prize. A further three novels — The B ...more