I recently read another Penelope Fitzgerald novel, her first (of nine). The Golden Child came out in 1977 and it has been said that it "offers a satirical version of the King Tut exhibition at the British Museum" (of 1972). It also pokes fun at museum politics, academic scholars and Cold War spying. it has 11 main characters and without visual clues I got some of them mixed up a bit adn the denouement which is of the detective genre was not that gripping but it is otherwise good stuff with some very funny lines. I wished I'd marked the funny lines. I read that the original draft was 75, 000 word but the publishers got her to cut it too 50,000. Good thing.
Some examples I found
In order to continue living in a very small terraced house in Claphain South, [ ... ] he had to repay to the Whitstable and Protective Building Society the sum of f 118 a month. This figure loomed so large in Waring's daily thoughts, was so punctually waiting for him during any idle moment, that it sometimes seemed to him that his identity was changing and that there was no connection with the human being of five years ago who had scorned concentration on material things.
'[t1he true international solidarity was not between workers, but between queuers'.
The courtyard was entirely filled with people. A restrained noise rose from them, like the grinding of the sea at slack water. They made slight surges forward, then back, but always gaining an inch.
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