Human Voices: And the Delights of British Satire

Categories: Rediscoveries , Staff Picks , Fiction

Too hot even for chilly reads featuring frosty adventures in cold climes?  Try a different approach.  Here's a little British satire as deliciously cool as a teaspoonful of sorbet. 

But not cold-hearted at all.  Human Voices is Penelope Fitzgerald's valentine to the men and women of the BBC radio service during World War II.  She worked there herself as a junior programming assistant.  The novel positively brims with sardonic fondness for the eccentric characters who labored to broadcast to the world during the war’s darkest days.

The action centers on the office of the Recorded Programmes Director, Sam Brooks.  Sam is a tenderly predatory man who likes to surround himself with pretty young assistants to listen to his many grievances against the world.

The Director of Programme Planning, Jeff Haggard, recognizes Sam’s genius and runs interference for him in the BBC’s bureaucracy, even though in general Jeff is a rather detached and ironic person not much given to helpfulness.  Amidst the chaos of bunkbeds in the concert hall, cultural programs slashed to make room for patriotic kitchen tips, tea rationing, and other hardships for the duration, Jeff helps Sam’s staff cope with an unexpected pregnancy and an even more unexpected bout of unrequited love. 

But the advance of the war means that Jeff will have to decide whether he will continue to spend his time solving Sam’s problems or put his abilities to use in some less detached capacity for the war effort.

Plenty of comedy, a little unvarnished tragedy, and above all a perfectly maintained tone of loving irony make this short novel a treat for readers of literary fiction.   Fitzgerald is inimitable.