The Gate Of Angels

In Penelope Fitzgerald’s historical novel, two strangers wake up in the same bed after a bicycle crash. Complications, of both heart and head, ensue. A novel of two “wonderful characters” who meet by accident in Edwardian England, and fall inconveniently in love (The Washington Post). 

In 1912 Fred Fairly is a Junior Fellow at the college of St Angelicus in Cambridge. He lectures in physics and worries about the universal problem known as ‘the absurdity of the Mind-Body relationship’. The young woman beside him when he wakes up one evening in the Wrayburns’ spare bedroom might help to resolve it, but how can he tell if she is quite what she seems? Fred is a scientist. To him, the truth should be everything, and indeed he thinks it is. But scientists make mistakes.  From the recipient of a National Book Critics Circle Award, among other honours, this story of an unlikely and possibly doomed romance is a “deft comedy of manners . . . Fitzgerald’s elegant prose shines with intelligence and subtle wit . . . Her flair for well-drawn eccentric characters will appeal to fans of Muriel Spark and Barbara Pym” (Library Journal). 

"For three-quarters of the book it is possible to read The Gate of Angels as a charming, quirky romance of lovers from different worlds. (...) This funny, touching, wise novel manages, despite its brevity, to seem leisurely. It is vibrant with wonderful minor characters, ablaze with ideas." -   Nina King, The Washington Post

Penelope Fitzgerald - a novelist and biographer - won the Booker Prize in 1979 with Offshore before executing a poacher-turned-gamekeeper u-turn and joining the 1991 judging panel. Fitzgerald, who died in 2000, did not start her literary career until the age of 58 and won the Booker Prize with her third novel, Offshore, set in a houseboat community.  Before turning to writing, Fitzgerald had known homelessness.