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The Blue Flower: A Novel Paperback – Illustrated, October 14, 2014

3.7 3.7 out of 5 stars 982 ratings

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A NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER in Fiction. Booker Prize–winning novelist Fitzgerald's crowning literary work centers on the 18th-century German poet and philosopher Novalis and his love for the simple Sophie.

The Blue Flower is set in the age of Goethe among the small towns and great universities of 18th-century Germany. It tells the true story of Friedrich von Hardenberg, a passionate, impetuous student of philosophy who will later gain fame as the romantic poet Novalis. Fritz seeks his father's permission to wed his "heart's heart," his "spirit's guide"—a plain, simple child named Sophievon Kühn. It is an attachment that shocks his family and friends. Their brilliant young Fritz, betrothed to a twelve-year-old dullard? How can this be?

Their rationality of love, the transfiguration of the commonplace, the clarity of purpose that comes with knowing one's own fate— these are the themes of this beguiling novel, themes treated with a mix of wit, grace, and mischievous humor.

“An extraordinary imagining . . . an original masterpiece.”—
Financial Times

"An astonishing book...Fitzgerald's greatest triumph."—
New York Times Book Review
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Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

“An astonishing book . . . Fitzgerald’s greatest triumph.” —New York Times Book Review

The Blue Flower is set in the age of Goethe, in the small towns and great universities of late eighteenth-century Germany. It tells the true story of Friedrich von Hardenberg, a passionate, impetuous student of philosophy who will later gain fame as the Romantic poet Novalis. Fritz seeks his father’s permission to wed his “heart's heart,” his “spirit's guide”—a plain, simple child named Sophie von Kühn. It is an attachment that shocks his family and friends. Their brilliant young Fritz, betrothed to a twelve-year-old dullard? How can this be?

The irrationality of love, the transfiguration of the commonplace, the clarity of purpose that comes with knowing one’s own fate—these are the themes of this beguiling novel, themes treated with a mix of wit, grace, and mischievous humor unique to the art of Penelope Fitzgerald.

“An extraordinary imagining . . . an original masterpiece.” —Hermione Lee,
Financial Times

PENELOPE FITZGERALD (1916–2000) was one of the most elegant and distinctive voices in British fiction. She won the National Book Critics Circle Award in fiction for The Blue Flower, the Booker Prize for Offshore, and three of her novels—The Bookshop, The Gate of Angels, and The Beginning of Spring—were short-listed for the Booker Prize.

About the Author

PENELOPE FITZGERALD wrote many books small in size but enormous in popular and critical acclaim over the past two decades. Over 300,000 copies of her novels are in print, and profiles of her life appeared in both The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine. In 1979, her novel Offshore won Britain's Booker Prize, and in 1998 she won the National Book Critics Circle Prize for The Blue Flower. Though Fitzgerald embarked on her literary career when she was in her 60's, her career was praised as "the best argument ... for a publishing debut made late in life" (New York Times Book Review). She told the New York Times Magazine, "In all that time, I could have written books and I didn’t. I think you can write at any time of your life." Dinitia Smith, in her New York Times Obituary of May 3, 2000, quoted Penelope Fitzgerald from 1998 as saying, "I have remained true to my deepest convictions, I mean to the courage of those who are born to be defeated, the weaknesses of the strong, and the tragedy of misunderstandings and missed opportunities, which I have done my best to treat as comedy, for otherwise how can we manage to bear it?"

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0544359453
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harper Paperbacks; Illustrated edition (October 14, 2014)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 320 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780544359451
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0544359451
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 9.8 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.81 x 8.25 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    3.7 3.7 out of 5 stars 982 ratings

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Penelope Fitzgerald
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Penelope Fitzgerald (17 December 1916 – 28 April 2000) was a Booker Prize–winning English novelist, poet, essayist and biographer. In 2008, The Times included her in a list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945". In 2012, The Observer named her final novel, The Blue Flower, as one of "the ten best historical novels".

Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Customer reviews

3.7 out of 5 stars
982 global ratings

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Customers say

Customers find the book delightful and enjoyable. They appreciate the detailed portrayal of life in that era and the humor. However, some find the pacing slow and frustrating at times. Opinions differ on the writing quality - some find it mesmerizing and haunting, while others describe it as rough and lacking craft. There are mixed opinions about the story length - some find it eccentric and short, while others feel the plot is pointless and lacks depth.

AI-generated from the text of customer reviews

21 customers mention "Enjoyment"17 positive4 negative

Customers enjoy the book. They find it delightful, pleasant, and refreshing to read. The prose is clear and the book is worth their time.

"...Ultimately, the book is about that ideal, or about the notion of reaching towards a romantic ideal, the blue flower, the distant horizon...." Read more

"Fitzgerald very effectively re-creates a time and way of life that has past with economy and directness...." Read more

"I found this book delightful from beginning to end. Her characters are mightily flawed, and get all my sympathy...." Read more

"...Fitzgerald’s characters are vivid, mysterious, and lovable. Only Penelope Fitzgerald could create something so expansive with so little...." Read more

20 customers mention "Depth"17 positive3 negative

Customers appreciate the book's depth. They find it rich in details and well-researched, providing an interesting look into life at that time. However, some feel the characters lack a sense of life.

"...to her characters, the families’ emotions struck me as powerful and deeply felt. I think I will continue living with this book, again and again." Read more

"...Much of the book is concerned with daily life and domestic details, but its first impression can be disorientating...." Read more

"...It does capture the everydayness of that life well, including some nice culinary descriptions...." Read more

"...It is historical fiction. Nevertheless, the characters are portrayed like stick figures, 1-dimensional, shallow, and with no character development...." Read more

8 customers mention "Humor"8 positive0 negative

Customers enjoy the humor in the book. They find it entertaining and engaging, with moments of laughter and tears.

"Heartbreaking and hilarious, compassionate and severe. A glittering jewel-box of a novel...." Read more

"...It’s also wonderfully funny. I read it when it came out, and was so delighted to rediscover it this week." Read more

"...The book has humor and sadness as she describes the life of its hero Fritz von Hardenberg, before he became Novalis, the late 18th century German..." Read more

"...Her writing is mesmerizing, haunting, hilarious, and for me, unforgettable...." Read more

25 customers mention "Writing quality"14 positive11 negative

Customers have different views on the writing quality. Some find it mesmerizing, haunting, hilarious, and well-written with a lovely antique shade to the prose. Others find the language odd, the characters unlikable, and the story lacking details.

"...But the strangeness wears off, the writing simplifies, and the book's ultimate effect is to give the stamp of absolute authenticity to everything..." Read more

"...portrait of everyday life during that period in history, stylistically elegant and somewhat heart-rending at the end, but slow and emotionless for 99..." Read more

"...The German I found off-putting at first, but it’s mostly people’s names, nicknames, and place names and adds a lovely antique shade to the prose...." Read more

"...and rave reviews, and the author is well-known and revered as a great writer. It is beyond me how this could be. The writing is awful...." Read more

17 customers mention "Story length"7 positive10 negative

Customers have mixed opinions about the story length. Some find the writing eccentric and interesting, with short and sweet chapters and vivid characters. Others feel the story lacks a clear plot and is odd, surreal, and lacking profundity or humor.

"...If Novalis had been nearly as dull, confused and pretentious as this novel, we would not remember him today...." Read more

"...The chapters are short and sweet, no explanations about life in the 16th century, yet Fitzgerald creates an intimate sense of life in German in this..." Read more

"...it is written in the style of Thomas Mann, with choppy language, an odd story (love of an intellectual for a 12-year-old child), and outbursts of..." Read more

"...for a book club and I enjoyed it for its language, consistency and short chapters...." Read more

14 customers mention "Character development"8 positive6 negative

Customers have different views on the character development. Some find the characters original and memorable, like real people from the time period. Others feel the characters never fully come alive, are portrayed like stick figures, and it's difficult to connect with them.

"...or indeed a conventional novel in any sense, although it is filled with memorable people...." Read more

"This is a slow, difficult read. The characters never really fully come alive and as a result you don't really care what happens to them...." Read more

"...is rich in the details of life in those times and in the portrayal of vivid characters who play important roles in the doomed courtship of this..." Read more

"...Well researched. Interesting perspective on her characters." Read more

11 customers mention "Heartfelt story"7 positive4 negative

Customers have different views on the story. Some find it sweet and sad, with humor and passion. Others describe it as surreal and historical, with excessive romanticism and irrationality of falling in love.

"Heartbreaking and hilarious, compassionate and severe. A glittering jewel-box of a novel...." Read more

"...This is not a conventional love-story, or indeed a conventional novel in any sense, although it is filled with memorable people...." Read more

"...during that period in history, stylistically elegant and somewhat heart-rending at the end, but slow and emotionless for 99% of the book, this might..." Read more

"...The book has humor and sadness as she describes the life of its hero Fritz von Hardenberg, before he became Novalis, the late 18th century German..." Read more

5 customers mention "Pacing"0 positive5 negative

Customers find the book's pacing too slow and frustrating at times. They also mention it's hard to get through and seems simplistic in its treatment of an 18th century poet's early life.

"...But be forewarned: this book is hard to get through. Chapters are short, mostly set pieces of primarily sociological interest...." Read more

"...The 3-4 page "chapters" get very tedious and irritating after a while and betray an inability to hold more than a brief scene in mind long..." Read more

"...Seems a simplistic treatment of an 18th century poet's early life and Moravian background...." Read more

"Strange and frustrating at times. Part surreal and part like a historical romance. Mostly like a German porcelain then a gut punch...." Read more

Top reviews from the United States

  • Reviewed in the United States on March 11, 2016
    Heartbreaking and hilarious, compassionate and severe. A glittering jewel-box of a novel. It’s the sort of book, as other reviewers have suggested, where you end up living inside its world.

    For a historical novel, The Blue Flower is vanishingly slim. It has 55 brief chapters--essentially vignettes of a few pages each--concluding with an incredibly spare and moving afterword. The German I found off-putting at first, but it’s mostly people’s names, nicknames, and place names and adds a lovely antique shade to the prose. (If audio is your speed and German is not, I definitely recommend the audiobook read by Derek Perkins—he gives marvelous voice to the ensemble cast and dispatches the German with utmost fluency!)

    So what is The Blue Flower? Better to start with what it’s not: it isn't, first of all, anything like an 18th-century Lolita story, although it’s hard not to make that link. Surely Fitzgerald wrote with this knowledge, although we don’t see her dropping any hints to that effect: the story feels deeply rooted in its time period. While the poet and philosopher Fritz von Hardenberg is attracted to young Sophie von Kuhn's looks, the way he describes her to others and speaks to her directly makes it clear that he’s primarily attracted to his self-created idea of the girl.

    Fritz calls Sophie “my heart’s heart.” For me, the “heart’s heart” of The Blue Flower lies in how it imagines the lives of two very different families, and in the questions its asks about the fragility of childhood and youth. Childhood and young adulthood in The Blue Flower look all the more fleeting and strange given how uncertain it was at that time for a person to survive to any great age.

    Social expectations for young women and girls also weave into the novel's reflections on youth: Fritz’s family and friends are startled and even shocked at his attachment to a twelve-year old girl, but since she is expected to marry at sixteen, how much (or how little) time has she left for childish things anyway? Does she become genuinely attached to him, and if so, in what ways? In the case of Fritz’s close friend Karoline Just, what happens if you are only in your twenties, yet feel that life has passed you by?

    But I don’t mean to make the book sound like a puzzle to be labored over. While some have experienced this as a dry or demanding read, or felt that Fitzgerald is overly harsh to her characters, the families’ emotions struck me as powerful and deeply felt. I think I will continue living with this book, again and again.
    35 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on May 18, 2007
    This is a Bildungsroman about Friedrich von Hardenberg, son of an impoverished aristocrat, whose poetry, published under the name Novalis, would come to define the mystical side of German Romanticism, a quest for an ideal harmony of man and nature symbolized by the Blue Flower. But Fitzgerald merely hints at the poet's later (but short) life in this lean, succinct book. Instead she shows him at home with his strict religious father and many siblings, impressing his professors at Jena with his curiosity about the latest thinking in seemingly every field, living with the family of a regional magistrate to study administration, making friendships, and falling in love. This love for a girl who is only twelve when he meets her is so absolute on his part, so little motivated on hers, that it becomes the embodiment of his philosophy of the ideal: that the qualities of an object of desire depend more on the beliefs of the beholder than on what it may be in itself.

    Ultimately, the book is about that ideal, or about the notion of reaching towards a romantic ideal, the blue flower, the distant horizon. But the Blue Flower of the title is only mentioned two or three times, in a quotation from the opening of Novalis' unfinished novel HEINRICH VON OFTERDINGEN. Fitzgerald knows that to establish the horizon, one first has to map the ground at one's feet. (This is especially true of Novalis, whose romanticism was not an escape from the real world, but a belief that everything in it -- human beings, animals, plants, even the rocks -- might communicate with one another on an equal footing.) Much of the book is concerned with daily life and domestic details, but its first impression can be disorientating. Fitzgerald writes in a clean but curious style that seems at times like an awkward translation from German (the definite article before some people's names, for instance, or the use of "maiden" instead of "girl"); oblique references to Kant and other thinkers of the day are tossed in but never explained. The reader is plunged into life in full spate, a busy repetitive life where the details of daily routine serve as ballast to flights of intellectual enquiry. But the strangeness wears off, the writing simplifies, and the book's ultimate effect is to give the stamp of absolute authenticity to everything that the author describes.

    This is not a conventional love-story, or indeed a conventional novel in any sense, although it is filled with memorable people. Ideas are sketched in with a few deft strokes, then left suspended. The author assumes that readers have either a good knowledge of the political and intellectual history of those watershed times, or that they can pursue these things on their own. She does not use the novel as a means of explaining history, let alone an aesthetic, but attempts a much more daring task: making you experience it at first hand -- even without quite knowing what you are experiencing. Perhaps a bit disappointing at first, this turns out to be a depth-charge of a book that stirs the mind long after the ripples of reading it have disappeared.
    22 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on April 16, 2012
    This is a slow, difficult read. The characters never really fully come alive and as a result you don't really care what happens to them. The author has based this book on the journals of the Romantic poet Novalis and evidently wanted to beam us back to this time in German history. It does capture the everydayness of that life well, including some nice culinary descriptions.

    But be forewarned: this book is hard to get through. Chapters are short, mostly set pieces of primarily sociological interest. Annoying and heavy-handed was how the author often failed to translate German words: I speak some German but had no idea what Herrenhutter meant. In the last 2 pages the book takes on pathos which partially redeems this slow plod through German society.

    At least it is not overdone and maybe life then was as boring as it seems to us now. Still this is partially about the birth of Romanticism, a reaction against the enlightenment. And I really don't feel the author fleshed out this theme much. And I don't think the protagonists were as passionless as she depicts them. As a writer of fiction, you may have to take that inaccurate and foolish leap to imagine what is going on in a character's heart and soul. I understand that this author aims for a Jane Austen type of distance and detachment, but I feel she might have done better by taking a few more emotional risks in her writing. Still the novel has craft and delivers its one two punch at the very end.

    Still if you like a crystalline literary portrait of everyday life during that period in history, stylistically elegant and somewhat heart-rending at the end, but slow and emotionless for 99% of the book, this might be your cup of tea, or roasted carrot ( apparently an occasional coffee substitute during this period).
    8 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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  • peter, spain
    5.0 out of 5 stars Una novela histórica realmente divertida
    Reviewed in Spain on February 23, 2022
    Me ha sorprendido gratamente este libro. De una novela histórica que es al mismo tiempo la biografía del joven Novalis la autora ha forjado una comedia que tiene mucha gracia. Hacía tiempo que no me reía tanto leyendo una novela.
  • H. Schneider
    5.0 out of 5 stars Country boy genius
    Reviewed in Germany on September 20, 2016
    One could call this lovely novel a tragic comedy, if it were not so unbalanced: it starts funny and ends sadly.
    A mildly mocking look at one of the saints of German romantic literature. Friedrich von Hardenberg, aka Novalis, was an unworldly dreamer, a naive chatterbox, and had, by modern standards, an inclination towards pedophilia, though he seems to have practiced restraint. The story of his life is a tragic one, with much consumption affecting key people. Both he and his childish fiancée died too young. (A list of famous writers who died of consumption would be quite long.)

    He wrote a classic book of the romantic school, the novel fragment Heinrich von Ofterdingen, which popularized the symbol of the blue flower. That stood vaguely for the elusive goal of love and longing etc. It gave Ms. Fitzgerald her book title.
    Personally, I don't have a high opinion of Novalis and his teacher, the idealist philosopher Fichte. I think that, in all their enthusiastic innocence, they were intellectual great-uncles of darker things to come in Germany. Their stance was anti-scientific and anti- enlightened.

    The story: we are in Germany at the end of the 18th century, in Saxony/Thuringia, with Goethe, Schiller, Fichte and other stars giving appearances. Novalis comes from a large family of religious and modest aristocrats. He is the eldest son. He struggles a little with his strict father about his career choice, as many young men do. (Father wins and Fritz becomes a practical man, a salt mining inspector.) There is much doubt and debate about his intention to marry a 12 year old girl with not quite equal social status. She falls seriously ill.

    The author handles the time, the place, and the society admirably. While the book's editing of German language bits and pieces is not fail safe, some German idiomatic habits are nicely carried into English. Example: the habit of calling a boy 'der Bernhard', or a married woman 'die Mandelsloh'. That becomes 'the Bernhard' and 'the Mandelsloh', and makes me feel at home. Is 'gracious lady' an adequate translation of 'gnädige Frau' though? It does sound surprising.
  • harriet
    5.0 out of 5 stars The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald
    Reviewed in France on February 23, 2016
    Highly original, entertaining and informative. Mrs Fitgerald writes most eloquently and her descriptions of late eighteenth century Germany at the time of the French Revolution are so alive and realistic one almost feels it is the present time. I would most certainly recommend this book.
  • welshclaire
    5.0 out of 5 stars It helps to have an element of madness
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 7, 2016
    This is an extraordinary book - one that was suggested by someone else in my book club - which I enjoyed exorbitantly and madly (an element of madness in one's own character is a necessary precursor to reading this book I would think). It has all the narrative coherence of a bolted rabbit - it weaves and staggers and seems to waver drunkenly at times; but it comes together at the end and unveils a host of absolutely charming characters, not least the future poet/philosopher, Novalis and his family of eccentric siblings. I was insanely frustrated by his devotion to his twelve-year old muse, who as acknowledged, has barely any attributes that attract devotion or friendship in modern terms, but I loved the minutiae of 18th century life in Germany, and once inculcated into the book's mysteries, found it totally enticing. This is a book that is irresistible; but not seductive. It doesn't go to town with it's humour, but it is artfully present at all times. Penelope Fitzgerald was obviously sailing splendidly in the wind with this book - comfortable in her position as an established and celebrated writer; aware of her own capacity for observation and passing on her many years' wisdom gently and meditatively. This book will reward you with fantastic riches; a pirate galleon's worth; but you have to dig deep to find the treasure.
  • Zwergenapfel
    5.0 out of 5 stars Eine romantische Liebe
    Reviewed in Germany on October 29, 2017
    Habe das Buch durch Zufall entdeckt und es gekauft, weil ich mich gerade mit dem Thema Romantik beschäftige. Ich fand es in vielerlei Hinsicht interessant. Zunächst einmal gibt es einem einen Einblick in Hardenbergs persönliche Umstände - er kommt aus einer kinderreichen Familie, ist Sohn eines verarmten Adligen. Sein Vater ist Mitglied der Herrenhuter und somit dem Pietismus zugeneigt. Die Geschichte seiner Verlobung mit Sophie von Kühn wird hier nicht als romantische Liebesgeschichte präsentiert, sondern dient dazu die romantische Liebe als Trugbild vorzuführen. Hardenberg verrennt sich in seine Idee, Sophie sei seine Seelenverwandte, obgleich nichts in der Realität diese Idee stützt. Dass Sophie dann erkrankt und stirbt ist im Prinzip die Rettung dieser romantischen Liebe, denn vor diesem Hintergrund verblassen alle Zweifel und Hardenberg kann dann den Rest seines (nicht allzulangen) Lebens um diese Liebe trauern. Umgekehrt wird deutlich, dass Hardenberg zwar ein großer Künstler mit großen Gefühlen ist, dass sich diese Gefühle jedoch nicht unbedingt auf seine Mitmenschen und deren Probleme im Hier und Jetzt richten.
    Spannend ist auch die Idee, Hardenberg im Roman den unterschiedlichsten Menschen aus seinem Romanfragment "Heinrich von Ofterdingen" vortragen zu lassen, in der Hoffung sie könnten eine Antwort darauf finden, was die blaue Blume denn nun bedeute. So wird deutlich, dass jeder - so er überhaupt in der Lage ist, eine Deutung zu finden - eine andere, individuelle Antwort auf diese Frage hat.