#penelope lively

[oldshrewsburyian]

Should I have closed out 2025 by spending almost $100 on used books? Probably not. But look at all my beautiful used books!

[saltwaterandstars]

JOMP BPC - 19th May - Newest Book

Not new, but new to me. My favourite cafe has a book exchange shelf and I picked this up last week. I don't think I've ever read any Penelope Lively, so the one that won the Booker Prize is a good place to start.

[nobeerreviews]

And in another year everything will be different yet again. It is always like that, and always will be; you are forever standing on the brink, in a place where you cannot see ahead; there is nothing of which to be certain except what lies behind. This should be terrifying, but somehow it is not.

-- Penelope Lively

(Bistrița, Romania)

[betokeneth]

The voice of history, of course, is composite. Many voices; all the voices that have managed to get themselves heard. Some louder than others, naturally. My story is tangled with the stories of others – Mother, Gordon, Jasper, Lisa, and one other person above all; their voices must be heard also, thus shall I abide by the conventions of history. I shall respect the laws of evidence. Of truth, whatever that may be. But truth is tied to words, to print, to the testimony of the page. Moments shower away; the days of our lives vanish utterly, more insubstantial than if they had been invented. Fiction can seem more enduring than reality. Pierre on the field of battle, the Bennet girls at their sewing, Tess on the threshing machine – all these are nailed down for ever, on the page and in a million heads. What happened to me on Charmouth beach in 1920, on the other hand, is thistledown. And when you and I talk about history we don’t mean what actually happened, do we? The cosmic chaos of everywhere, all time? We mean the tidying up of this into books, the concentration of the benign historical eye upon years and places and persons. History unravels; circumstances, following their natural inclination, prefer to remain ravelled. So, since my story is also theirs, they too must speak –Mother, Gordon, Jasper… Except that of course I have the last word. The historian’s privilege.

Penelope Lively, Moon Tiger (1987)

[feignedremote]

A summer. Two summers, perhaps, and a winter. Time out of mind ago – at least not out of mind but shrunk to a necklace of moments when [my brother and I] did this or that, when we said this or that, were here or there. When we were at home, sprawled side by side in the schoolroom, absorbed in one another while downstairs Mother sings to herself as she does the flowers. Or in Gordon’s rooms at Cambridge, or at a theatre in London or roaming the Dorset landscape, arrogantly bored. I don’t wonder people looked at us with dislike. A year, perhaps two… And then we both began to look beyond each other, to wander away, to take an interest in the despised proletariat beyond. That time went; it is also forever there, conditioning how we are with one another. Because of it, other people are still excluded. Most of them never knew this; only Sylvia, poor stupid Sylvia, who got a whiff of it but never knew what it was she smelled. Later, much later.

Penelope Lively, Moon Tiger

[bookcoversonly]

Title: Moon Tiger | Author: Penelope Lively | Publisher: Grove Press (1997)

[minipliny]

Penelope Lively, Metamorphosis

Only Penelope Lively could write a short story where a house is haunted but the striving middle class couple are so prostrate with envy at the upper middle class couple's Aga and Le Creuset set that they completely fail to notice this. This is a compliment, by the way!

Metamorphosis is a set of short stories from across Penelope Lively's career; she's such a graceful and funny author at times - and has written children's stories - but she also has such a satirical lightness of touch. My two absolutely favourites are "A Long Night at Abu Simbel" and "The Slovenian Giantess" which both deal with the unravelling of a certain type of Englishness.

In A Long Night at Abu Simbel the leader of a tour group just gets completely fed up of their behaviour and abandons them at a temple; they spend overnight at the airport. The group dynamics, the atmosphere, the tension are all so funny to me, in that everyone in their own way expects the world to cater to them and suddenly have to realise that it doesn't always; I read this story when I was about nine and still remember it.

In The Slovenian Giantess, an English writer in the Balkans goes through her literary conference and visit still treating everyone and everything at a reserve, as though they are the picturesque locals who have to deal with the vicissitudes of conflict and life and she is completely removed from them, until her situation changes. It's a different kind of rude awakening to a Long Night At Abu Simbel, but it still creates a miniature with a lot of resonance, as well as a brilliantly paced story.

[kunstmull]

70s Childhood Starter Pack

Your generation grew up reading H*rry Sodding P*tter but my generation grew up reading THIS

No wonder we all grew up and got into Folk Horror