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|summary=This is a major biography of an important woman novelist, essayist, poet and critic. Penelope Fitzgerald won the Booker Prize and was included in The Times list of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945.

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A major and intelligent novelist like Penelope Fitzgerald has happily become the subject of a sensitive and engaging biographer, Hermione Lee. The result is enthralling; a work which is entertaining, informative and profound. In an earlier essay, ''A Quiet Ghost'', Lee mentions interviewing Fitzgerald on the radio in 1997. Two impressions struck the interviewer. First, how her novels always seemed to leave something unsaid. They contained some mysterious, perhaps even transcendental quality to stimulate the reader's imagination. On the other hand, Fitzgerald thought that the writer ought not to be impartial and indeed should be clear about her own moral position. This viewpoint drew her to write both eloquently and sympathetically, ''of those who are born to be defeated, the weakness of the strong and the tragedy of…..missed opportunities.''