Bask - Shop now
$12.64
Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime FREE Returns
FREE delivery Saturday, April 12 on orders shipped by Amazon over $35
Or Prime members get FREE delivery Wednesday, April 9. Order within 2 hrs 25 mins.
Only 1 left in stock - order soon.
$$12.64 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details
Price
Subtotal
$$12.64
Subtotal
Initial payment breakdown
Shipping cost, delivery date, and order total (including tax) shown at checkout.
Ships from
Amazon.com
Amazon.com
Ships from
Amazon.com
Sold by
Amazon.com
Amazon.com
Sold by
Amazon.com
Returns
30-day refund/replacement
30-day refund/replacement
This item can be returned in its original condition for a full refund or replacement within 30 days of receipt.
Read full return policy
Payment
Secure transaction
Your transaction is secure
We work hard to protect your security and privacy. Our payment security system encrypts your information during transmission. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Learn more
Kindle app logo image

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

QR code to download the Kindle App

Follow the author

Penelope Fitzgerald
Follow
Something went wrong. Please try your request again later.

The Gate of Angels Paperback – September 26, 1991

by Penelope Fitzgerald (Author), Philip Hensher (Introduction)
3.7 out of 5 stars 752 ratings
{"desktop_buybox_group_1":[{"displayPrice":"$12.64","priceAmount":12.64,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"12","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"64","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"xV72RXlnwvAjwZAbFCQpwlL2C%2B9jdWoza9cM9VzppL%2FqGUSNpvUFjGLoLTT2SvJF4cfLyo3JUwCvDlxOcTWS%2B9XDjoSmpHIkb%2Fm9uwoXFYgiQA9QoF27jQfSISncdqE5FGjnnfvffa4%3D","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"NEW","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":0}]}

Purchase options and add-ons

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

It is 1912, and at Cambridge University the modern age is knocking at the gate.

Fred Fairly, a Junior Fellow at the college of St Angelicus, where for centuries no female, not even a pussy cat, has been allowed to set foot, lectures in physics. Science, he is certain, will explain everything.

Until into Fred's orderly life come Daisy. Fred is smitten. Why have I met her? he wonders. How can I tell if she's quite what she seems? Fred is a scientist. To him the truth should be everything. But even scientists make mistakes.

Previous slide of product details
  1. Print length
    176 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Fourth Estate
  4. Publication date
    September 26, 1991
  5. Dimensions
    5.06 x 0.56 x 7.81 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0007178301
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0007178308
Next slide of product details
The%20Amazon%20Book%20Review
The Amazon Book Review
Book recommendations, author interviews, editors' picks, and more. Read it now.

Frequently bought together

The Gate of Angels
This item: The Gate of Angels
$12.64
Get it as soon as Saturday, Apr 12
Only 1 left in stock - order soon.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
+
The Bookshop
$9.59
Get it as soon as Saturday, Apr 12
In Stock
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
+
Offshore: A Novel
$10.99
Get it as soon as Saturday, Apr 12
In Stock
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
Total price: $00
To see our price, add these items to your cart.
Details
Added to Cart
Some of these items ship sooner than the others.
Show details Hide details
Choose items to buy together.

Editorial Reviews

Review

'Reading a Penelope Fitzgerald novel is like being taken for a ride in a peculiar kind of car. Everything is of top quality - the engine, the coachwork and the interior all fill you with confidence. Then, after a mile or so, someone throws the steering-wheel out of the window.' Sebastian Faulks

'Wise and ironic, funny and humane, Fitzgerald is a wonderful, wonderful writer.' David Nicholls

'A book which delights, amuses, disturbs and provokes reflection, in equal measure. It is a triumph of craftmanship, intelligence and sensibility.' Scotsman

'Contains more wit, intelligence and feeling than many novels three times its length.' Observer

'Formidable... no writer is more engaging than Penelope Fitzgerald.' Spectator

'Penelope Fitzgerald writes books whose imaginative wholeness and whose sense of what language can suggest is magical. Whichever way you twist the lens of this kaleidoscopic book, you see fresh things freshly.' Evening Standard

'The book is short and full of activity. The story moves swiftly in unexpected directions. It is inspiring, funny and touching.' LRB

'Gilbert could have written this and Sullivan set it to music. It shows an Edwardian university at Cambridge at its eccentric best. There are so many characters that are a delight. So many foibles and so much fancifying. Fitzgerald is the only author I know who regularly gets reviews pleading her to write longer books.' Daily Mail

About the Author

Penelope Fitzgerald was one of the most elegant and distinctive voices in British fiction. Three of her novels, The Bookshop, The Beginning of Spring and The Gate of Angels have been shortlisted for the Booker Prize. She won the Prize in 1979 for Offshore. Her last novel, The Blue Flower, was the most admired novel of 1995, chosen no fewer than nineteen times in the press as the 'Book of the Year'. It won America's National Book Critics' Circle Award. She died in April 2000, at the age of eighty-three.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ 000654360X
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Fourth Estate; Revised ed. edition (September 26, 1991)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 176 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0007178301
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0007178308
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.06 x 0.56 x 7.81 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    3.7 out of 5 stars 752 ratings

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.
Penelope Fitzgerald

Penelope Fitzgerald

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.
Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Penelope Fitzgerald (17 December 1916 – 28 April 2000) was a Booker Prize–winning 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".

Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Customer reviews

3.7 out of 5 stars
752 global ratings

Review this product

Share your thoughts with other customers
Write a customer review

Customers say

Customers find the book charming, with one review noting how it explores serious questions of faith and reason while maintaining a balanced prose style. Moreover, the characters are fully realized, and the subtle humor is appreciated, with one customer highlighting smart comic asides about philosophy and science. However, customers have mixed opinions about its readability.

AI-generated from the text of customer reviews

Select to learn more

7 customers mention "Charm"7 positive0 negative

Customers find the book charming, with one review noting how it explores serious questions of faith and reason while maintaining a romantic tone.

"...final masterpiece THE BLUE FLOWER, in which exquisite style and an idealized romanticism precisely capture the spirit of the..." Read more

"...with a smart funny writer who knows how to create a compelling fictional world.In this and other novels ,Fitzgerald shows an acute sense of the past...." Read more

"...There are moments of brilliance, I will happily grant, and the baffling characters that are her wont...." Read more

"I liked the history of new mathematics at the beginning of the twentieth year. Also the class distinctions and the love of family...." Read more

7 customers mention "Language"7 positive0 negative

Customers appreciate the writing style of the book, with one noting its balanced prose and another highlighting its delicate approach.

"...You will discover a goldmine of pleasure: the deft word, the fully realized characters, the surprising endings from this British writer." Read more

"...tend to reflect the aesthetic of an earlier era, notably in a balanced prose style one might expect of Virginia Woolf or Elizabeth Bowen, coupled..." Read more

"...It's a neo-Victorian (Edwardian?) story told in her usual wry and delicate style but it doesn't have quite the deft touch of The Blue Flower or The..." Read more

"The book was generally well written but not terribly engaging. Slow read with not much happening...." Read more

5 customers mention "Character development"5 positive0 negative

Customers appreciate the fully realized characters in the book.

"...You will discover a goldmine of pleasure: the deft word, the fully realized characters, the surprising endings from this British writer." Read more

"...There was no flow. Although some of the characters were interesting and the setting, the early 1900s, was a curious time at the cusp between..." Read more

"...There are moments of brilliance, I will happily grant, and the baffling characters that are her wont...." Read more

"...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..." Read more

4 customers mention "Humor"4 positive0 negative

Customers appreciate the book's subtle humor, with one review noting its smart comic asides about philosophy and science.

"...Their awkward romance is charming and funny.The ending is ambiguous.Not much really happens here and most of what does is scaffolding...." Read more

"...The writing is lovely, the humor is subtle but very much there, and the plot keeps the pages turning...." Read more

"Fitzgerald charmingly blends empathy and irony in depicting her female and male protagonists and their improbable relationship...." Read more

"Enjoying a dark sense of humor..." Read more

7 customers mention "Readability"4 positive3 negative

Customers have mixed opinions about the readability of the book, with some finding it a lovely read while others describe it as not terribly engaging.

"...It's also a pleasure to read.One important aspect of Fitzgerald's writing is that you never feel you're slumming...." Read more

"The book was generally well written but not terribly engaging. Slow read with not much happening...." Read more

"...Still, a lovely read." Read more

"...the air, but not in the case of this refreshing though at times aggravating book. Let me clear up the aggravating business first...." Read more

Top reviews from the United States

  • Harriet DeCell Kuykendall
    5.0 out of 5 stars All of Penelope Fitzgerald's stories are a treasure. Read ...
    Reviewed in the United States on February 20, 2015
    Verified Purchase
    All of Penelope Fitzgerald's stories are a treasure. Read this one as well as The Book Shop, At Freddie's, Offshore, Human Voices, The Golden Child. You will discover a goldmine of pleasure: the deft word, the fully realized characters, the surprising endings from this British writer.
    2 people found this helpful
    Helpful
     Report
  • Roger Brunyate
    4.0 out of 5 stars Jeu d'esprit
    Reviewed in the United States on January 31, 2009
    Verified Purchase
    Though little more than a fable, this charming novel explores serious questions of faith and reason. By attempting to balance qualities that are essentially irreconcilable, Penelope Fitzgerald brings off an entertaining juggling act, even though the various parts do not completely hang together.

    Fred Fairly, a junior fellow at a fictional Cambridge college, works at the Cavendish Laboratory in 1912, at the dawn of the new science of nuclear physics. The son of an Anglican rector, he has abandoned Christianity in favor of rationalism -- yet he finds himself profoundly affected by a highly irrational occurrence. Following a cycling accident on a country road, he wakes up in bed with a beautiful stranger, and immediately falls in love with her. He cannot explain such love, and Fitzgerald deliberately makes it impossible for him to rationalize the attraction in social terms. For Daisy Saunders, the young woman in question, is a nurse's aide from a poor district of London; there is no way she would be considered a suitable marriage partner for a Cambridge don. But in many ways she is more fully realized than Fred himself is; she certainly has a head on her shoulders and her feet on the ground.

    In 1990, when this book was published, Penelope Fitzgerald was in her seventies and had been writing for only fifteen years. Her novels tend to reflect the aesthetic of an earlier era, notably in a balanced prose style one might expect of Virginia Woolf or Elizabeth Bowen, coupled with an almost naive view of romantic love. These qualities will come into their own in her final masterpiece THE BLUE FLOWER, in which exquisite style and an idealized romanticism precisely capture the spirit of the German poet Novalis. Here, though, the two are deliberately at odds. Fairly inhabits an ivory palace whose academic courtiers delight in debates that may bear little relationship to their actual feelings. With the pragmatism of poverty, Daisy says what she means and does what she must; Fitzgerald's description of her background might have come from Somerset Maugham's OF HUMAN BONDAGE. The author goes further by erecting an even more ethereal Cambridge within the real one; Fairly's college, St. Angelicus, is imagined as a monastic enclave to which no women are admitted, and he belongs to a contrarian debating society whose members are all required to argue against their firmly-held points of view.

    Unfortunately, little is made of Fairly's discipline as a nuclear physicist. Early in the novel, his mentor, a physicist of the old school, predicts the development of quantum mechanics, portraying it as the abandonment of physical rationalism in favor of a vague mathematical faith. It is a brilliantly lucid passage that perfectly captures the theme of the book; I wish that more of it had been on this level. I also wish that the very likeable characters might have interacted on more solid ground -- though if all the ground had been as solid as Daisy's there would be no debate. So this turns out to be more a jeu d'esprit than a novel; but there is an abundance of spirit here, and so much fun.
    11 people found this helpful
    Helpful
     Report
  • JAK
    3.0 out of 5 stars Cambridge ,Romance ,Science
    Reviewed in the United States on May 11, 2015
    Verified Purchase
    Of the novels I've read by Penelope Fitzgerald , this is probably the weakest.It's also a pleasure to read.One important aspect of Fitzgerald's writing is that you never feel you're slumming.She is resolutely intelligent and erudite and appears to assume you are.To a considerable degree , this is a light , comic , romance.One with a difference.Silly as it is at times,there are smart comic asides about philosophy and science that are not at all gratuitous.It's set in Cambridge before WW1 .Fred is a college fellow whose rather anachronistic college mandates celibacy.He falls in love with Daisy, from a decidedly lower class background.Their awkward romance is charming and funny.The ending is ambiguous.Not much really happens here and most of what does is scaffolding.The pleasure you take from this book comes from your encounter with a smart funny writer who knows how to create a compelling fictional world.In this and other novels ,Fitzgerald shows an acute sense of the past.I'd say she was definitely up to something.Specifically, how did we get from there to here.
    19 people found this helpful
    Helpful
     Report
  • Susan G Strauss
    2.0 out of 5 stars No Flow
    Reviewed in the United States on February 5, 2019
    Verified Purchase
    Reading this book was like a car that needed a lot of engine work. There was no flow. Although some of the characters were interesting and the setting, the early 1900s, was a curious time at the cusp between religious/philosophical thinking to a scientific/analytic mindset, the story... well, what was the story exactly. It was a love story that didn't even get started until over halfway through. There was another rather mysterious subplot that added nothing, distracted from everything and wasn't really resolved in any way. I plowed through this book to find some good reason that I'd finish it. I'll commend the book for a little humor, but I wouldn't recommend it.
    5 people found this helpful
    Helpful
     Report

Top reviews from other countries

  • A. Reid
    5.0 out of 5 stars Peak Fitzgerald
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 7, 2018
    Verified Purchase
    Penelope Fitzgerald is one of my favourite writers - acute, unexpected, subtle, vivid, funny... she has everything - and she reached her peak in these late novels, I think. The Gate of Angels and The Beginning of Spring are the best, in my view. I have yet to read the Blue Flower... I've been keeping as a treat as I don't want to run out of her novels too quickly.
    Report
  • Mrs AG
    4.0 out of 5 stars Beautifully written, subtle, atmospheric...
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 20, 2024
    Verified Purchase
    I loved the way this slight book started off with scenes of academic life at the Cambridge college Angels setting a slightly fay tone for what could almost have been a little fable were it not for PF's extraordinary facility with language that, like a poet, expresses so much with such economy. With the lightest of touches the author creates a great range of authentic characters, from the blind and delightfully dotty Master of the college, the solid family of a country rector which has spawned Fred the earnest young don who struggles to reconcile physics with feeling and God, a courageous London working class girl called Daisy to whom Cambridge is an unknown world, the farming community... and so on. Momentous issues are touched upon and WWI looms.
    A longer book might have been a greater joy but less subtle, though I could happily have forgone some subtlety for more book. The book itself flirts with various genres, including the ghost story, so beloved of Edwardians. This one is very M R James! This may irritate some readers but not me. It is also slyly funny and touching in parts. The plot does slow a little towards the end and then picks up and redeems itself in the last few pages, in spite of leaving things up in the air a bit re. the love interest. Not her most coherent work - for me that has to be the exquisite The Beginning of Spring - but her writing is nevertheless than a joy to read.
    Report
  • Amazon Customer
    3.0 out of 5 stars I love Penelope Fitzgerald's writing
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 21, 2017
    Verified Purchase
    I love Penelope Fitzgerald's writing . I've only just discovered her as an author and admire her lightness of touch. I was however a little disappointed in the ending of this book.I had got involved in the two main characters and their relationship and felt let down by the inconclusiveness of the ending.
    Report
  • talmine
    5.0 out of 5 stars Cambridge Academic Life and Love in 1912
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 17, 2014
    Verified Purchase
    This a charming story of love at first sight, set in Cambridge in 1912. Fred and Daisy meet as the result of a bicycling accident. It happens on the outskirts of town when a horse and cart suddenly career out of a farm entrance and scatter three cyclists: Fred, Daisy (who had never met before) and a third party (known to Daisy)who was uninjured. Fred and Daisy are taken by the farmer's son to a nearby house where they are put to bed, more or less unconscious, by the kindly owners. When they wake up Fred at once decides that Daisy is the girl for him.

    Fred is a physicist and Fellow of a College, St Angelicus, a strictly male establishment (like the Monastery at Mount Athos in Greece). Daisy comes from a poor background, a trainee nurse from Blackfriars Hospital in London, from which she has recently been unfairly dismissed, and has come to Cambridge looking for work in a local Hospital.

    The story revolves around this mundane and somewhat mysterious event. Fred, who has come off worst is taken to a cottage hospital. Unfortunately Daisy has disappeared by the time he is up and about.

    However there is much, much more to the story. It deals with the inevitable conflict between science and religious faith, democracy and universal suffrage and women's rights; and not least the absurd restrictions of life without women in St. Angelicus. (Nowhere however is there any hint of the impending European catastrophe 1914-18.)

    In the end however Fred does catch up with Daisy, but only by chance! A truly 5* read.
    Report
  • Jackie B
    4.0 out of 5 stars Refreshingly different
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 4, 2018
    Verified Purchase
    Quite a short novel with some beautiful descriptions evoking a particular time (pre First World War) and place (Cambridge). Especially like Daisy’s story, Fairly’s visit home and the ghost story. Probably something to read a second time as contains a lot to think about.
    Report