- Hardcover: 213 pages
- Publisher: David R Godine Pub (July 1985)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0879234393
- ISBN-13: 978-0879234393
- Product Dimensions: 19.8 x 14.7 x 2.3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 386 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,599,503 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
Age has indeed withered the proprietress of London's Temple School for child actors, but custom has yet to stale her infinite, cadging variety. Freddie--born Frieda Wentworth--is Penelope Fitzgerald's most marvelous sacred monster, a woman insanely devoted to her art. Over several decades she has foiled debt collectors, creditors, and bailiffs at every turn. What matter if Freddie's Covent Garden redoubt is freezing and falling apart, her own office-cum-bedroom a haven for must and dust, mold and mothballs? When one would-be financier has the temerity to display a balance sheet, she orders him to put it away, "in the tone she used to the local flasher." After all, this force of theatrical nature can always rely on actors and theaters for desperate, last-minute donations. On the other hand, it is 1963, and the school is threatened by others specializing in film and TV training, but so far Freddie is sticking to her Shakespearean guns.
The Temple's permanent staff consists of an unskilled handyman and Freddie's assistant and dresser, the possibly malevolent Miss Blewett. Its acting coaches include a man who's made his career out of understudying Nana, the dog-nurse in Peter Pan. Needless to say, the students are not impressed. To further trim expenses, Freddie has hired two new teachers from Northern Ireland. One, Hannah Graves, is qualified; the other, Pierce Carroll, decidedly not--but Freddie hires him for other reasons: "She had heard in his remarks the weak, but pure, voice of complete honesty. She was not sure that she had ever heard it before, and thought it would be worth studying as a curiosity." These two innocents are in academic charge of the young thespians, an egomaniacal, mostly mendacious lot. (In a stage school, after all, insincerity is a good thing.) But Freddie's does house one genius: 9-year-old, unknowable Jonathan Kemp. Even his guinea pig inherits his bad luck, and is soon devoured by one of the theater district's roving felines. Jonathan seems destined to be overshadowed by Mattie Stewart (later Stewart Matthews), a showoff who at least has the grace--even if it is manifested in spurts of violence--to know himself inferior. Meanwhile, we watch Pierce fall in love, hopelessly, with his colleague. Alas, he hasn't a chance against the dissipated actor Boney Lewis, though Hannah tries not to destroy him: "At the corner, she gave him a hug and a kiss, as one does to a cousin, or to the inconsolable."
At Freddie's, Penelope Fitzgerald's 1982 parable of the talents, constantly shifts between such despair and high comedy. Many Fitzgerald-philes feel that she reached her apex in her three European novels--Innocence, , and The Blue Flower. In fact, she had already arrived there with this perfect novel of ideas, ideals, and oddities. --Kerry Fried --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
Review
At Freddie's is a charming novel, witty and engaging, and just the thing for a lazy summer afternoon. -- The Boston Herald
How great a risk Mrs. Fitzgerald took here, and how triumphantly that risk was justified, will not be realized until the very end. -- John Braine, Sunday Telegraph
Occasionally one picks up a book and knows by the bottom of the page one that nothing but pleasure lies ahead. At Freddie's falls into that category. In three lines and a snatch of dialogue Penelope Fitzgerald can nail a character, in a paragraph conjure up a place and an atmosphere. -- Judy Astor, Listener
The ability to pace herself with the finesse of an Olympic gold-medallist is something Penelope Fitzgerald happily possesses. With At Freddie's she has both extended her territory and consolidated it. It is a true and strong work. -- Francis King, Spectator --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
How great a risk Mrs. Fitzgerald took here, and how triumphantly that risk was justified, will not be realized until the very end. -- John Braine, Sunday Telegraph
Occasionally one picks up a book and knows by the bottom of the page one that nothing but pleasure lies ahead. At Freddie's falls into that category. In three lines and a snatch of dialogue Penelope Fitzgerald can nail a character, in a paragraph conjure up a place and an atmosphere. -- Judy Astor, Listener
The ability to pace herself with the finesse of an Olympic gold-medallist is something Penelope Fitzgerald happily possesses. With At Freddie's she has both extended her territory and consolidated it. It is a true and strong work. -- Francis King, Spectator --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
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Most helpful customer reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
The strange world of theatre - children's theatre,
By
This review is from: At Freddie's (Paperback)
What a surprising book and what a funny one. The first Penelope Fitzgerald I read and a lovely introduction to her wonderfully witty work. "At Freddie's" is life in a slowly fading London Theatre school for children. It is the 1960's and Freddie, who is the mysterious woman who runs the school, believes that children should be trained for Shakespeare and for the stage - not for the fleeting career of television and advertisements which are starting to pull children from other schools.Into this world drop Carroll, an unsuprisable Irishman, who doesn't seem to be able to do anything. He applies to Freddie for a job as a teacher but admits he can't really teach, or in fact do anything. Freddie hires him because he is cheap and honest, and he procedes to do just what his interview shows he could do so promisingly - nothing. But he has fallen in love with the other teacher who applied the same day, Hannah. Hannah is more ambitious and wants to 'chose, not be chosen'. A dictate which runs her life. Their relationship is played out against the lives of school's precocious children, mostly the strange friendship of Mattie - a 13 year old child over-actor and the quiet, self-contained 9 year-old, Jonathon. It was a wonderful, fun read.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Not if its with me, dear.,
This review is from: At Freddie's (Paperback)
"Freddie", a woman who is part institution and part legend, speaks the quote above; she is also the latest spectacular person that Ms. Fitzgerald offers to readers.The quote is unremarkable until it is penned as an answer to an Accountant named "Unwin", who stated, "Surely a discussion should have a basis of substantial fact." The rejoinder that is the title of this review follows, and you have a good sense that Freddie flaunts convention, floats above the rules that affect others, and when she is confronted with a bit of reality, ends the discussion with her nemesis feeling not only were they wrong, but they are indebted to her. A debt collector not only fails to collect, he leaves his vest for use as a costume for the students of Freddie's school for children of the theatre. Precocious children are not new to Ms. Fitzgerald's books. In this book the line between child and adult is blurred even further, as these thespians in the making are adept at changing who they are when circumstances or their own whimsy calls. All the affectation that can be associated with their mature counterparts of the stage, are played out by the kids, and this makes for wonderful reading, as age is modified by characterization, and not measured in years. There are more eccentric players in this book than the others I have read by Ms. Fitzgerald, to sample just one, a gentleman when deciding on which of the sins he would choose, does not pick one with even some benefit in this life, but chooses sloth. His opinion of himself is in line with the wish, and a more pathetic character has rarely appeared. Into all this there is a love triangle of sorts, a grand piano that is sinking through the floor, "as though wading ashore", and a vast and rich story that Ms. Fitzgerald once again delivers on so few, but so spectacular pages.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Theatrical Skullduggery,
By
This review is from: At Freddie's (Paperback)
Penelope Fitzgerald is at her most devilishly entrancing in this tale revolving around the London acting school run (and I mean RUN!) by Freddie, a larger-than-life Gorgon whose will cannot be resisted. Fitzgerald has fun skewering the backstage pretentions, intrigue and petty jealousies of the London theater world of the early 1960s, but, clearly loving every seedy corner of it, she celebrates it with such gusto that you want to sign up on the spot for a season or two. That combination of wryness and fondness makes this short novel among Fitzgerald's most satisfying. And when Freddie goes out looking for a pound or two, hang on to your wallets!
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