This is a quietly fascinating novel--restrained, tentative because the main character wonders exactly how she finds herself in this position, but feeling its way forward and pulling readers along. It is historical fiction about the trip novelist Penelope Fitzgerald took to Mexico in the 1950s with her six-year-old son Valpy to hopefully claim an inheritance. Fitzgerald is not yet a novelist (she's the mother of two and pregnant again, with a husband who can't cope with his drinking or his war trauma, co-editor of a literary magazine, and desperate for money); she is a person who is very good at making things work, but is facing an impossible amount. And the community she finds in Mexico is not anything anyone would expect. Each character is sketched in effectively, with the same surprise and detachment Fitzgerald would show in her latter novels. This is a book about growing into yourself and your writing (and also the desperation, financial or otherwise, that pushes people into making art). It fascinatingly moves between fiction and nonfiction, including excerpts from letters from Fitzgerald's children (including Valpy). Like Fitzgerald's own fiction, it is difficult to pin down and completely its own thing. I loved it, and it immediately made me turn back to Fitzgerald's own novels with new interest.

Thank you to the author, the publisher, and Netgalley for my free earc in exchange for an honest review. My opinions are all my own.

Penelope Fitzgerald takes her son, Valpy, from the UK to Northern Mexico, to a secret location that doesn’t exist on a map. Fonseca is the home of two wealthy, elderly, and single women, the Delaney sisters. The women constantly host extravagant dinners, which friends and acquaintances happily attend because of the social scene and flowing booze; more pertinently, the question regarding who inherits the Delaney women’s money keeps the folks around. Fitzgerald lives on the Delaney property for this reason: their family faces financial trouble, and receiving monetary help could save them from ruin. Throughout the novel, the author inserts her correspondence with the adult Fitzgerald children, and these letters briefly offer a different narrator’s perspective from Penelope’s main storytelling during their stay in Mexico.

I appreciate Kane’s imaginative goal in theory, but I never quite immersed myself in the story. The details about wingback chairs, for example, seemed to lean more heavily on the telling side of writing. I wondered whether my general preference for non-historical fiction books affects my reading, and it could be true. However, I wanted to know Fitzgerald and Valpy better, rather than their financial troubles as such.

My thanks to Penguin Press and NetGalley for an ARC. I shared this review on GoodReads on August 23, 2025 (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7840256378).

Cozy and lighthearted and yet mysterious and reflective, even a touch tragic. Spurred me to look into Saltillo, the art of Hopper and reminisce about the Penelope Fitzgerald booths I have read and other books on my shelf about expats in Mexico. The child character, Valpy, is the heartbeat of the novel for me.

In the early 1950s, the English author Penelope Fitzgerald went on a trip to Mexico. At the time she was pregnant with her third child and was traveling with her eldest, a young son, Valpy. Her younger daughter and husband stayed behind. Her motivation was an elusive inheritance that might have aided her and her brilliant yet rarely sober husband to continue funding a literary magazine and make a life back in England. Building upon these facts, Jessica Francis Kane creates a world of intrigue, quirky characters, and haphazard events that bewilder, enchant, and frustrate both Penelope and Valpy. What have they gotten into? Interspersed with a narrative that is observant, wry, and picturesque are actual letters written and recalled years later by Valpy and his sister. The artist, Edward Hopper and his wife also make an appearance! This is an enjoyable and enlightening read that should appeal to many who appreciate travel, clever observations, and a touch of adventure. Highly recommended. Thanks to Netgalley for providing this title.https://www.goodreads.com/review/edit/221473239

In late 1952, writer Penelope Fitzgerald (1916–2000, see Beyond the Book) and her husband, Desmond, faced severe financial troubles and the literary magazine they co-edited World Review was failing. In addition, Desmond’s alcoholism was increasingly spinning out of control and Penelope was three months pregnant with their third child.

When Penelope received a surprising invitation to Mexico from distant family connections, two elderly women named Delaney, who asked to meet her son, Valpy, who was five-year-old at the time, and hinted that he might inherit their silver-mine fortune, she saw a possible Hail Mary solution to the family’s financial problems. She immediately arranged care for her two-year-old daughter, Tina, left Desmond in charge of the upcoming journal issue, and travelled with Valpy by ship from Southampton, England, to New York, then on by bus to Mexico.

Writing about it in an essay for the London Review of Books almost thirty years later, Fitzgerald laid out only the bare bones of their ultimately disastrous three-month stay at the Delaney mansion in the Mexican town she fittingly calls Fonseca (a Spanish name derived from fonte seca, meaning “dry well”). On the night that they arrived, she discovered that the Delaney women were well on their way to “drinking themselves steadily to death,” and were already surrounded by others competing for the fortune, all of whom “wanted to get rid of me and my son as soon as possible.” Soon, more “pretenders” showed up, including a mysterious man claiming to be a close relation of the ladies. Many odd events occurred, including an accidental death, for which she and Valpy were somehow blamed. Finally, she reports, “we left on the long-distance bus without a legacy, but knowing what it was to be hated.” As much as she would have liked to have written about her time in Mexico, she realized that the entire experience already felt like fiction, and that she would not be able to write it in a way that could possibly sound believable. “I knew that I hadn’t the capacity to relate the wide-spreading complications of the Mexican legacy, however well I remembered them,” but, she added, “I am sorry to let it go.”

Luckily for readers, in her new novel, Fonseca, Jessica Francis Kane has taken up the gauntlet and reimagined the Mexico story that Fitzgerald was never able to write. This is no mean feat. Fitzgerald left behind sparse breadcrumbs: she rarely spoke to friends or family of her time in Mexico and there were few surviving letters, notes, or accounts of the trip. Perhaps this has ultimately worked in Kane’s favor; unobstructed by the complications of the true story, she has had the freedom to create a fully cohesive fictional narrative. Kane observes in the acknowledgments that she and Fitzgerald share an interest in the relationship between history, biography, and fiction, and this novel is a beautiful blend of research and imagination.
Kane’s novel opens with mother and son arriving at the Delaney mansion in Fonseca, Mexico. They are met by the taciturn housekeeper, Chela, who seems surprised by Valpy’s young age and even more surprised to see Penelope on the doorstep with him, as though Valpy might somehow have managed to travel to Mexico on his own. This first strange misunderstanding sets the scene for many others to come, and the novel is awash in various forms of cultural miscommunication, interpersonal misinterpretation, and purposeful misdirection. The old house itself is brimming with hidden histories, family mysteries, and hauntings both real and imagined.

Fascinating characters populate the Delaney household, including the staff, the elderly sisters-in-law, Doña Elena and Doña Anita, and the tight group of supplicants that surround them, competing with and undermining one another, and all nurturing plans for important projects that would be possible only with a chunk of the Delaney legacy (a fleet of book mobiles, an art center, a national bird museum, a hospital wing, church repairs, a garden club and azalea society, and a silver guild, amongst others). The artist Edward Hopper and his wife Jo are also staying in the village, and Jo becomes the only friend that Penelope makes during her stay (another nod to Kane’s research: she discovered that the Hoppers were indeed based in the same area when Fitzgerald was in Mexico). Kane also, to great effect, interweaves portions of letters that she received from the real Valpy and his sister Tina, who provide the few memories that they each have of the time.

In her fictional retelling, Kane fleshes out details of the Mexican sojourn that Fitzgerald only hints at in her essay: the arrival of a mysterious stranger claiming to be a lost Delaney relative, the accidental death and why Penelope and Valpy might have been blamed for it, the difficulties of facing one’s own needs and nature, and the challenges at home in England that might have led Fitzgerald to take on such a wildly improbable undertaking.

In this story of an ultimately fruitless excursion, Kane expertly conjures a narrative vision all her own, even as she remains ever faithful to her source. Echoes of Fitzgerald’s style can even be found in the novel’s spare sentences and understated observations. On her journey back home, the character Penelope reflects: “Fonseca wasn’t a place.…If anything it was an idea, or a time. It was a dry well. It was certainly the end of a dream and the beginning of a long wait.” And here, again, Kane taps into a deep vein that runs throughout all of Penelope Fitzgerald’s work: what her biographer Hermione Lee calls “the power and value of failure in the world.”

An edited version of this review will appear in the 27 August 2025 issue of BookBrowse

Thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Press for the ARC.

A beautifully crafted, fictionalized slice of Penelope Fitzgerald’s life, set in 1952 Mexico. Newly pregnant with her third child, struggling with an alcoholic husband and mounting financial pressures, Fitzgerald makes the arduous trip from England with her young son, Valpy, hoping to secure part of an inheritance from two elderly women connected to her late mother. What she finds is a chilly, eccentric household full of competing “heirs,” cultural misunderstandings, and a charming interloper nicknamed “the Delaney.”

Kane captures the postwar mood, the claustrophobic tension of genteel poverty, and Fitzgerald’s sharp observational wit. The novel feels like something Fitzgerald herself might have written—wry, intelligent, and full of human quirks. Valpy is a delight, the setting vividly rendered, and the undercurrent of uncertainty keeps the pages turning. A fascinating, atmospheric character study that will make you want to revisit Fitzgerald’s own work.

Fonseca is a weird and wonderful novel filling in fictional gaps from a real life trip taken by Penelope Fitzgerald to Mexico in the 1950s.

What I loved most about this book was the witty writing. I laughed out loud at several moments, which I never normally do. Whether it's because the author has read and loved Fitzgerald's works for years, or because she's an excellent writer (a mix of the two I think), Penelope and Valpy appeared so real and multi-dimensional. I found myself thinking of the book when I wasn't reading it.

While fictionalised, I thought the inclusion of the Hoppers was genius. I can imagine it's a huge task to take real lives and fictionalise sections of them, but I can see this was done with care and sincerity. I thought it was interesting to include real letters from Penelope's children sent to the author, and maybe knowing they approved of the book allowed me to enjoy it all the more.

*thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Press for the arc

'Fonseca', by Jessica Francis Kane, is an imagined version of a trip that author Penelope Fitzgerald took with her young son Valpy, to Mexico in the early 1950s, in the hope of gaining a legacy.

The novel uses what is already known about Fitzgerald and her family situation. With two children (and another on the way) and a war-damaged husband, only just coping with the help of alcohol, Fitzgerald's financial situation was precarious and her marriage fraught. The journal she and her husband published was not successful and they were in danger of losing their house and their livelihood. 'The trip to Mexico must have felt like a lifeline.

The imagined story of the trip depicts the heiresses as difficult and also reliant on alcohol. Also not welcoming, especially of Penelope herself. It seems they had expected only her six year old son. The cast of other characters mainly comprises house staff and others in hopes of gaining the legacy. There are inevitable jealousies and petty squabbles, as well as devious tactics to win the affections of the spinsters and their legacy. There is a latent love story between Penelope and an alleged relative of the Delaney sisters, referred to simply as 'The Delaney' generally, but whose clam to the inheritance seems at best suspect.

Interspersed throughout the novel are actual letters from Penelope's children to the novel's author, helping to authenticate the general thrust of the book, only really hinted at otherwise.

I found the book fascinating, especially in that this trip appears to have fuelled some of Fitzgerald's writing and the style adopted in the novel is not too far-removed from that of Fitzgerald herself. It certainly made me want to revisit Fitzgerald's novels and learn more about her life.

A delightful novel and completely wrapped me up into 1950’s Mexico. Jessica Francis Kane is a truly wonderful storyteller and I know I can count on her for a thought provoking and warm read

In her new book, Jessica Francis Kane takes several months from the life of Penelope Fitzgerald and weaves them into the kind of novel Penelope Fitzgerald might have written herself. As you may recall, Penelope Fitzgerald is the author The Bookshop, which was made into a movie, and Offshore, which won the Booker Prize – and a lot more.
Fonseca charts a time in Fitzgerald’s life when she had two small children and another on the way. She and her husband Desmond were living beyond their means, editing a literary magazine which was yet to make their fortune, and hampered by Desmond’s drinking problem. We’re in that post-war period, the early 1950s, and the war has taken its toll on Desmond, and so the two are keen to make a go of their literary review. But the bank manager has his concerns, and the family is likely to lose their home.
Penelope learns of a couple of elderly women sitting on the proceeds of a silver mine in Mexico, former friends of her late mother’s, when one contacts Fitzgerald with the news that they have nobody to leave their money to. Why doesn’t she send her boy Valpy to stay for a while to see how they get on? It’s a long journey by sea and bus and things are different from what they expect when they arrive.
The women expect an older boy and they don’t expect Fitzgerald to have tagged along. Fitzgerald discovers there are other people hovering, dropping in for evening drinks each night, who hope to get something too. There’s a lot of drinking, and the nights are cold. Penelope sleeps on a couch so her son can have the bed, and there’s no chair with the desk where she hopes to work. Somehow she and Valpy manage to stay three months as Christmas approaches and the weather becomes colder than what they have packed for.
Jessica Francis Kane brings to life this quirky household – the tricky old women, the staff who can be difficult to communicate with. Over time, Penelope explores the area, meets people – mostly, but not only, expats – and learns about local customs. Valpy is a bright boy for his age and delightful. There are misunderstandings and superstitions that put a spanner in the works of Penelope’s best intentions.
Apart from the possibility of money, the time away gives Penelope time to consider her marriage, particularly when another potential heir arrives, “the Delaney”, who is charming, adding another strand to the story. You also get the feeling that she might be incubating the stories that will later make her name.
Jessica Francis Kane has obviously done more than simply research Penelope Fitzgerald’s life and the period she spent in Mexico. You get the feeling that she has lived with and loved Fitzgerald’s literature for a long time. Probably no one else could have written this book. I suddenly want to read and reread more by Fitzgerald. Altogether, Fonseca is a brilliant read – clever, well written and with fascinating characters. A five-star read from me.
I received Fonseca as a reader’s copy from Netgally. The book is due to be released on 12 August.

I was interested in the whole Mexican setting and the letters from Fitzgerald's children. I loved so much the author's notes, superb.

A truly unique and engaging book -- this is a fictionalized account of a period in the life of author and editor Penelope Fitzgerald. It begins in post world war II England, finding Penelope newly pregnant with her third child, struggling with an alcoholic husband and difficult finances. She receives news from the Delaney sisters in America, who are Irish ex-pats living in New Mexico. Penelope is led to believe that she may be the heir to their estate. In some desperation, she leaves her little daughter Tina in the care of relatives and takes her younger child, son Valpy, across the ocean and on a long bus trip through the American South, only to arrive in New Mexico to find that things were not exactly as presented. A fascinating story unfolds as Penelope navigates the chaos and confusion of the Delaney sisters household and wonders what is to become of her supposed inheritance.

While acknowledging that this is an extremely well written novel, I have to admit that I found Fonseca difficult to enjoy.
The claustrophobic atmosphere, quite deliberately created by Jessica Francis Kane, and the sense of melancholy pervading the whole book, coupled with the knowledge that Penelope Fitzgerald's visit to Mexico was ultimately doomed to fail made this a novel to admire but not wish to read again.
While fictional, the book deals with a real person ,Penelope Fitzgerald, and a real event in that complicated writer's life. It is always tricky to fictionalise , but in this case, I feel this comes off well in Fonseca.
A literary and well crafted novel, cleverly using letters to fill in some of the narrative this is a story many will find fascinating.
The descriptions of Mexico are vivid, and the cast of characters fascinating, including Edward Hopper, the painter. The book, in my opinion, is a little reminiscent of Hopper's paintings, which often seem to convey a sense of loneliness and isolation despite their sense of colour.
So, to sum up, I acknowledge the author's ability, and the book's merit, but cannot say I enjoyed it for myself.
NetGalley and Penguin supplied an e arc a d this is my honest review.

Fonseca, a work of historical fiction, fills a gap in the life of writer Penelope Fitzgerald. A vague and unexpected invitation from long-lost wealthy relatives to Fitzgerald's son, Valpy, brings the English mother and son to Fonseca, Mexico. Immediately immersed into a social contest for fortune and favor of the heiresses, they adjust to life away from everything familiar.

Valpy spends his days apart from his mother, and on the outside, seems to adapt to life away from home quickly. Penelope, on the other hand, remains wary of others and their motivations.

Jessica Francis Kane sends her readers to Mexico in the early 1950s, painting the main house and the characters within with vivid description. It's easy to see the color and texture of Fonseca's food, plants, architecture, and animals.

Anyone interested in artists, writers, and travel in the mid-1900s will enjoy this well-researched and imaginative novel with a strong female lead.

Thank you to Penguin Press for the ARC.

#Fonseca #NetGalley

Thank you to Netgalley and Penguin Press for this ARC.

Fonseca is an ambitious and imaginative novel that reimagines a pivotal journey in the life of Penelope Fitzgerald, but, unfortunately, I really struggled to get through it. I just couldn't connect with any of the characters and couldn't become invested in their financial plight. The pacing is a little uneven, with certain sections feeling overly detailed or slow. However, despite this, it is an admirable exploration of resilience and ambition.

Thanks to Netgalley and Penguin Press for the ebook. A wonderful novel about the author Penelope Fitzgerald, set in a small town in Mexico in 1952, when she and her husband were running a struggling literary magazine back home. Penelope has come with her young son, Valpy, two see if two older women, with a slight connection to Penelope, might want to give her son part of their fortune. She makes the difficult trip from England, only to find that there are several other people vying for this money. There’s even the appearance of Edward Hopper and his wife staying nearby. A fun tale of saints and vipers who orbit this small world.

I loved this novel. The author perfectly captures Mexico in the 1950's. The story is about the writer Penelope Fitzgerald"s trip to Mexico with her six year old son Valpy. In deep financial trouble she hopes to receive a legacy from two old women who are without an heir and curiously invite Fitzgerald to Fonseca Mexico. The trip is a desperate act, pregnant, she leaves behind her three year old daughter and alcoholic husband.
There is a cast of interesting characters, some with an eye on the legacy others are workers and members of the community. The artist Edward Hooper and his wife Jo have a cameo.
The characters are wonderful and the structure is interesting with letters written by Fitzgerald's children punctuating the engaging story.
Highly recommended!

What a gift of a book. I came to it with no foreknowledge and it took me a while to realize that it was based on the life of not just any but THE Fitzgerald. All the more impressive. Kane’s wit and gentle insights are delightful enough, but then there’s the extrapolation of a lived existence, the problems and pleasures. Plus the voice of Fitzgerald’s own children. A treasure trove, delivered with grace and insight. Bravo