Dear walking book clubbers,
I hope you are enjoying At Freddie’s as much as I am. All the precocious children. All the eccentric lost souls. So much love for the theatre, and a sharp portrait of this corner of 1960s London … I’ve been totally absorbed.
Hope to see you on our walk on the Heath this Sunday, 11.30-1pm, setting off from Daunt Books Hampstead, 51 South End Road, NW3 2QB. We walk in all weather, and it is currently looking dry.
If you can’t make it on Sunday, for whatever reason, why not join me on Zoom on Monday evening, at 8pm?
Zoom link HERE.
Meeting ID: 721 1893 8206
Passcode: 7cvm7H
Buy the book from Daunt and get 10% off either in person by telling them you’re in the gang, or online if you use the code WBC at checkout, here.
More on Penelope Fitzgerald
Long-term members of Emily’s walking book club will be well-versed in Penelope Fitzgerald. We have already read: The Gate of Angels, Offshore, The Blue Flower, The Bookshop and The Beginning of Spring. I highly recommend them all! She is such a brilliant writer and these are slim, intelligent, witty, powerful novels.
You can watch Gaby Wood’s interview with Fitzgerald’s biographer, Hermione Lee, at English Pen’s Literary Salon here:
There is this tiny piece for NPR’s You Must Read This slot about At Freddie’s, which is good about how Fitzgerald conveys sadness and hope at once.
I enjoyed this on LitHub, which looks at Penelope Fitzgerald alongside Jane Gardam (another favourite writer of mine) and appreciates the benefits of their late start to writing - Fitzgerald at 61; Gardam at 43.
Lucy Scholes (who wrote so well about Penelope Mortimer) has also written well about Penelope Fitzgerald’s life, for Granta, here. Jenny Turner also wrote well about her for the LRB here.
*** Thank you to the many of you who have signed up as paid subscribers to these newsletters. Your subscription is a huge help in keeping Emily’s Walking Book Club on the go. Please consider subscribing for £20/year if you don’t yet do so. There is also the £50/year option which includes a bespoke literary consultation with me - let me know if you’d like more details. ***
A note on our June walk
Tickets are now on sale for our mid-June meeting - the perfect timing for Virginia Woolf’s Modernist classic Mrs Dalloway.
Buy your copy from Daunt Books and get 10% off using the code WBC when checking out online (here), or in person by telling them you’re in the book club.
Hugely looking forward to hearing your thoughts on At Freddie’s on Sunday and Monday!
See you then,
Emily