Jessica Francis Kane’s “Fonseca” is a daring book.
“Fonseca” is the story of Penelope Fitzgerald, a real-life writer who published her first novel in 1977 (“The Golden Child”) at age 61. She went on to be nominated for the Booker Prize for 1978’s “The Bookshop,” before winning the Booker in 1979 for “Offshore.” Fitzgerald was considered one of the greatest British novelists of the 20th century, an heir to no less than Jane Austen.
Kane, author of 2019’s gentle and penetrating “Rules for Visiting,” has taken a real-life incident from Fitzgerald’s pre-novelist life and spun it into something very much like a Penelope Fitzgerald novel, while also clearly being its own distinct entity. It requires some mettle to take the life of a beloved author and render that life as a work of imaginative fiction.
In the novel, it’s 1952 and Fitzgerald is pregnant with her third child and married to Desmond, who returned from World War II an intractable alcoholic. Together, they are editing a magazine, “World Review,” which most famously first published J.D. Salinger’s “For Esmé with Love and Squalor” in the UK. Their finances are dire. The magazine is not profitable, Desmond is not reliable, and they’ve overextended themselves by moving into a large house in need of repair.
So when a letter arrives from one of the two widowed Delaney sisters inhabiting a large house in Fonseca that says it’s possible that her son Valpy is an heir to a fortune achieved through silver mining, Penelope and Valpy cross the ocean and find their way to the house.
Once there, they find all manner of competition for the fortune of unknown size, various hangers-on and supplicants who come before the “Doñas” to make their case. The evenings consist of group salons over the cocktail hour, followed by dinner, conducted by the Doñas and fueled by Chela, the home’s chief cook and overall major domo.
The novel is constructed as a series of episodes, mostly featuring Penelope and Valpy, a precocious and winning child who steals the heart of Chela and that of the reader as well. At one moment, Penelope is chasing down what seems to be a ghost in the house. A chaste, but real romance blooms between Penelope and a grown male potential heir who may or may not be a Delaney. Valpy hooks up with the local troop of sea scouts, despite Fonseca being entirely landlocked. An ongoing thread involves Penelope intersecting with the painter Edward Hopper and his wife Jo.
The novel is low on events — a chapter might be as simple as a visit to the market for Valpy to buy a piggie bank — but thanks to Kane’s deft touch, every moment is infused with a deep, lived-in feeling, the same warmth and acuity she brought to “Rules for Visiting.” The central question of whether Valpy will be judged a worthy heir, saving the Fitzgerald family finances, looms over the months the book covers. But the energy in the book comes from the close attention to the characters’ lives.
In an interesting, metafictional twist, several chapters into the book, we are greeted with a letter from a grown-up Valpy to the (unnamed) author correcting the record. There is no “Fonseca,” the town was “Saltillo.” The family was “Purcell,” not “Delaney.” Valpy shares his memories that we have previously read in the novel. These letters from Valpy and Tina, the daughter left behind with her mother-in-law, are sprinkled throughout and highlight the daring of Kane’s invention.
Penelope Fitzgerald lived and wrote; we can know her. Jessica Francis Kane has taken this knowing and made something fresh and beautiful.
