Set in 1912, Fred Fairly an academic of the fictional St Angelicus College in Cambridge is a confirmed bachelor in accordance with college rules that permit no female to enter their doors. Then Daisy arrived in dramatic fashion when he crashed his bicycle into hers. They were both knocked unconscious and wakened up in the same bed, Daisy's wedding ring intended to fend off unwelcome men causing the misunderstanding. Without providing him even with her name the endearing Daisy returned to London going on to become a probationer nursing student. All this time Fred has been unable to forget her.

Fitzgerald's books are little jewels and this one is exactly that, however, she also introduces questions about the nature of belief and of issues facing women and their need for solidarity. While it is a charming love story it's also beautifully written with wit and intelligence. ( )

For pure reading pleasure, Penelope Fitzgerald is for me a sure bet, and this novel lives up to her usual standards. The writing is lovely, the humor is subtle but very much there, and the plot keeps the pages turning. The characters are interesting and in some cases very sympathetic -- one gets attached to them -- and the sense of place as so often in her books is powerful. Why not five stars, then? I found the book a bit talkier than "The Beginning of Spring", or "The Blue Flower", with extended asides on the theory of physics in the early 20th century. Still, a lovely read. ( )

This is a lovely book about the end of the Edwardian era set in Cambridge. Fred Fairly is employed at eh College of Angelicus where women are not allowed on the premises. Son of a poor vicar, he's satisfied with his fate until he wakes up next to Daisy Saunders, both of them the victims of a bicycle accident with a cart. Daisy is from a poorer class, a nursing student let go because she violated patient privacy trying to help him. Fred falls violently in love, but their world is on the cusp of change which may help or hinder his suit.
The writing is delightful, wry and descriptive. The setting of the fens suits the story, adding to the ghostly elements, as well as the wind driving the plot forward. The students and professors at the university debate science vs. faith and Ms. Fitzgerald illustrates the points perfectly:
“You have come to Cambridge to study the interdependence of matter and energy. Please remember that energy and matter are in no way something distinct from yourselves. Remember, too, that scientists are not dispassionate. Your judgement and your ability to do good work will be in part dependent on your digestion, your prejudices and above all, your emotional life. You must face the fact that if another human being, whose welfare means considerably more to you than your own, behaves in a very different way from anything you had expected, then your efficiency may be impaired. When the heart is breaking, it is nothing but an absurd illusion to think you can taste the blood. Still I repeat, your efficiency may be impaired.”
This was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and I can see why. The Gate of Angels is both literal and figurative; it is a doorway to change. I heartily recommend this and any book by Penelope Fitzgerald. ( )

Quite good, but not in the first rank of PF books. ( )

The thing that I liked most about Penelope Fitzgerald's "Offshore" was its marvelous fresh-air quality. The fact that its story revolved around two young girls and a cast of half-bohemian, very British eccentrics probably helped, but that one seemed admirably straightforward and meticulously composed in equal measure. "The Gate of Angels" doesn't have that quality, but then, it's a very different sort of book. Here, Fitzgerald's characters are defined not by their relative freedom but by the restraints that have been placed on their lives: structural poverty, in Daisy's case, and the thousand regulations and social customs that govern life at Cambridge, in Fred's. Her tone may be somewhat ironic, but Fitzgerald's description Daisy's desperately impoverished upbringing and her narrow escape from it is as good a description of the structural factors that held down London's working class during the first half of the twentieth century as you'd get from most historians. This, along with the ghost story that Fitzgerald uses as a plot point but decides to include in the text, seemingly on a whim, might be the most successful parts of this novel.

I liked the rest well enough -- and admit that the book has a cracking first sentence -- but didn't really love it. Fitzgerald may be trying to draw some parallel in "The Gate of the Angels" between the imperceptible atomic science with which Fred is peripherally involved and the unknowable mechanisms of roamance, but this comparison either isn't drawn particularly well or its subtleties were simply beyond me. It's not that I'd call "The Gate of the Angels" an unserious or unsuccessful novel, but I'd warn readers with decidedly unromantic dispositions to avoid it entirely. In its physical and temporal setting (rural England, 1912) and the sense it gives the reader that an older, Victorian Britain is slipping away, this one reminded me of Forster's "A Room With A View." The author drops a few hints about the coming storm that would break in 1914, but doesn't reveal anything about these characters' ultimate fates. The proudly romantic conclusion of Forster's novel was decidedly optimistic about the coming century. "The Gate of Angels" keeps its characters blissfully ignorant about what's coming next. Maybe that's for the best. ( )