Human Voices

Book Review

Penelope Fitzgerald

Human Voices is yet another exceptional component in Penelope Fitzgerald's body of work. She writes novels that are perfect gems, clear, bright, and sparkling with inner truth and beauty. For this novel, she draws on her experiences working for the BBC during World War II. In it, she focuses on a strange group of BBC broadcasters and their struggles to make sense of it all while trying to eke out a bit of personal happiness behind the scenes. She is the master at telling these small, humourous, and expertly well-crafted vignettes.

“As an institution that could not tell a lie, they were unique in the contrivances of gods and men since the Oracle of Delphi. As office managers, they were no more than adequate, but now, as autumn approached, with the exiles crowded awkwardly into their new sections, they were broadcasting in the strictest sense of the word, scattering human voices into the darkness of Europe, in the certainty that more than half must be lost, some for the rook, some for the crow, for the sake of a few that met their mark. And everyone who worked there, bitterly complaining about the short-sightedness of their colleagues, the vanity of the news readers, the remoteness of the controllers and the restrictive nature of the canteen's one teaspoon, felt a certain pride which they had no way to express, either then or since.”

“'The BBC is going its bit. We put out the truth, but only contingent truth, Annie! The opposite could also be true! We are told that German pilots have been brought down in Croydon and turned out to know the way to the post-office, that Hitler has declared that he only needs three fine days to defeat Great Britain, and that there is an excellent blackberry crop and therefore it is our patriotic duty to make jam. But all this need not have been true, Annie! If the summer had not been fine, there might have been no blackberries.'”