The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald (1995)

In 18th century Germany, a young philosophy student who will later become famous as Novalis, falls for a plain and simple 12-year-old girl.

Book Review:  Oh, no!  And mea culpa.  Penelope Fitzgerald is a good writer. She's won the Booker prize, and The Blue Flower won the National Book Critics Circle Award.  But the book just didn't welcome me in, and try as I might I couldn't find a key to open the door.  I read it all, but it just seemed opaque, and the characters were uninteresting.  The writing was fine and the research was obviously extensive. But beyond an apparent desire to write a historical novel, I'm just not sure what Fitzgerald was doing in The Blue Flower; part of the problem may be that I'm unfamiliar with the main character, who becomes the poet Novalis. The young Novalis is a philosopher living his life high in the air without regard to reality, living according to abstract philosophical precepts rather than the quotidian life that stands before him. Fitzgerald writes of the everyday details and facts of life and work, amply provided by her meticulous research. Real people with real lives that start before Novalis's entrance and continue after his departure seem to be the real characters and real story of The Blue Flower, that Novalis barely notices, and so they also get not quite enough of the story from the author.  Fitzgerald even provides an interesting conversation between Novalis and a female character about novel writing, in which Novalis comes off second best.  How can Novalis become a writer when he can't see life?  The main character's love interest, Sophie, a child, did not seem interesting or lovely the way Nabokov at least made Lolita seem like an interesting and lovely child. This is a case when I feel like a bad reader for finding The Blue Flower only barely interesting, tho readable, as even a bad pizza is okay.  A.S. Byatt likes it, and I like A.S. Byatt.  So I can only conclude that I'm a bad reader. Coincidentally, after I read this I read Shosha by I.B. Singer, which also had a child/woman as the main character's love interest.  By contrast, Shosha steals every page she's on, and then stole my heart.  But perhaps that's the point: Singer's character sees Shosha as the person she is; Novalis never sees Sophie for herself. This hasn't put me off Penelope Fitzgerald, and I'll look for Offshore, which won the Booker prize in 1979.  This may well be a good book, it's just too subtle for me.  Again, mea culpa. [3 Stars]