An English writer on a mysterious Mexican sojourn yields an absorbing new novel

Boston Globe

3 days ago

Penelope's three-month hiatus in Fonseca, along with Valpy, forms the spine of Kane's novel. Evoking real-life events and how they fired the crucible of an artist's imagination, Kane's technique is delicate yet astute, recalling Elizabeth Strout. Mirando is a sprawl of rooms, 'a heavy rounded balcony that reminded Penelope of a pulpit,' Kane writes. 'There were several tall chimneys, two dormers, and a number of mullioned windows in various sizes, all shuttered. Old, twisted pecan trees on the street further darkened the front.' Penelope jots down the occupations and habits of her fellow residents at Mirando: an impoverished organist and his wife, a pompous Irish tutor, and a dashing cousin, New Jersey-born and raised, called 'the Delaney.' There's also a surly gardener and a cook who spoils Valpy with sweets and gossip. Other vague connections flow among the frayed furniture. All are vying for the fortune.
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Doña Elena is imperious, Doña Anita deferential — think Christine Baranski and Cynthia Nixon's characters in HBO's '
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Kane intersperses her pointillist chapters with present-day correspondence from Valpy and Tina, blending fact and fiction. (Fonseca's actual name was Saltillo, for instance.) The emails sent by the Fitzgerald children, now retired, map a counter-narrative, a playback in reverse, skewing the plot — something about a murder? What manner of story is this? 'Fonseca''s tensions break the fourth wall, arousing our suspicions while undermining the very structure of the book.
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Kane could have piled on the textures and sensory details of Mexico — the tang of queso fundido, shadows scattered across stucco arches — but maintains a supple restraint. Less is more. 'Fonseca' is a portrait of the artist as a young woman, the internal
on-the-one-hand-on-the-other-hand
common among women who strive for balance between familial obligations and creative desires. Compromises are frustrating, unwanted, and inevitable. As Penelope's pregnancy advances, as the Doñas guess her secret, she stares down these challenges.
Desmond lingers offstage yet he permeates Penelope's thoughts at Mirando. 'Fonseca,' then, is a welcome diversion from our rage-soaked, polarized culture: a fable with heart and a searching investigation into what makes a marriage endure. A market saturated with divorce memoirs can only benefit from Kane's candor, despite the occasional sentimental note amid her prose. Like heroines before her, Penelope faces a choice. 'Maybe if Desmond didn't love poetry. Maybe if he didn't write so well. Maybe if they hadn't stayed up so many nights when they were younger talking about painting and music and architecture,' she mulls. 'Maybe if he became unpleasant when he drank. If he got angry or loud instead of quiet and sad. Maybe if he hadn't cried with happiness when Valpy was born. Maybe if he didn't hold Tina so gently and read stories aloud so well.'
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Kane bases 'Fonseca' on Fitzgerald's 1952-53 trip, which seems to have been cloaked in mystery, and the result is a book brimming with entangled fiction, history, and biography, the unexpected treasures a writer unearths at the convergence of genres. Kane is true to the muse at the center of her novel, highlighting not only Penelope Fitzgerald's stature and vision but also the necessity of literature in an era of university budget cuts and social-media distractions.
FONSECA
By Jessica Francis Kane
Penguin Press, 272 pages, $28
Hamilton Cain is a book critic and the author of a memoir, 'This Boy's Faith: Notes from a Southern Baptist Upbringing.'