Five novels that made Penelope Fitzgerald's list

Penelope Fitzgerald, as I've noted before, is one of my favorite writers.

The year before her death she shared with Salon.com a short list of books that touched her.

"With each one of these novels I thought, as soon as I'd read the first page, This is it," she wrote. "It's difficult to argue about this, although I've sometimes had to, but in reading many hundreds of novels, some of them very good, I've had the sensation quite rarely."

--Marshal Zeringue