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The Photograph |
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| Author: |
Penelope Lively |
 Book Review
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Hardcover |
| ISBN: |
0641679254 |
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The Photograph |
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| Author: |
Penelope Lively |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Paperback |
| ISBN: |
0142004421 |
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| Availability: |
Usually ships within 24 hours. |
From Publishers Weekly
Lively likes historians. Her most famous novel on this side of the Atlantic, the Booker Prize-winning Moon Tiger, told the story of a popular historian; her latest narrates the quest of a "landscape historian" in search of what Proust called "lost time": the living past of his dead wife. Glyn Peters, a famous British archeologist, discovers a compromising photograph of his wife, Katherine Targett, sealed in an envelope in a closet at home. Peters specializes in excavating the long defunct gardens, buried fields and covered-over roads of the British landscape. Reverting to professional habits, he treats Kath's infidelity as a sort of archeological dig. The photo depicts Kath and Nick Hammond, the husband of Kath's sister, Elaine, surreptitiously holding hands on some outing, with Elaine and Mary Packard, Kath's... |
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Making It Up |
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| Author: |
Penelope Lively |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Hardcover |
| ISBN: |
0670034479 |
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| Availability: |
Ships within 2-3 days. |
Book Review
Making It Up, Booker Prize-winning author Penelope Lively's cleverly termed "anti-memoir," is an enthralling examination of how both fate and free will can dramatically alter the lives of each and every one of us. Each of Lively's expertly crafted stories reveals the life she could have lived, had she, or another, chosen a different path. Yet in answering a series of "what if" questions, Lively does more than indulge her imagination; rather, she challenges her readers to examine the consequences of both the significant, and the seemingly trivial decisions we make every day. Each of the stories in Making It Up deals with a different stage of Lively's life, and examines fictional alternatives to the roads she and others traveled. The Mozambique Channel charts the course of Shirley, a British nanny who... |
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Moon Tiger |
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| Author: |
Penelope Lively |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Paperback |
| ISBN: |
0802135331 |
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From Library Journal
Lively recently won Britain's prestigious Booker Prize for this deeply moving, elegantly structured novel. The heroine is Claudia Hampton, an unconventional historian and former war correspondent who lies in a hospital bed dying of cancer. Forced inward, Claudia moves randomly across time and place to reconstruct the strata of her life. But "most lives have their core, their kernel, the vital centre"; Claudia's is the brief, tragic encounter she had in Egypt during the war with Tom Southern, a British tank officer on leave from battle. Tom's voice, along with those of her brother and daughter, joins Claudia's to shape a narrative that is a complex, intricately composed fugue. This haunting evocation of loss is Lively's finest achievement yet.Laurence Hull, Cannon Memorial Lib., Concord, N.C.Copyright 1988 Reed... |
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Oleander, Jacaranda |
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| Author: |
Penelope Lively |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Paperback |
| ISBN: |
0060926228 |
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| Availability: |
This title is not currently available. |
From Publishers Weekly
Lively, the Booker prize-winning British author of Moon Tiger , here recalls her childhood in Egypt from the mid-1930s until her parents divorced in 1945 when she was 12. This intriguing memoir of growing up in another culture relies on Lively's perception of experience rather than on a detailed chronology of events. Her father, whom she rarely saw, was a manager at the Bank of Egypt; her mother was taken up in the expatriate social whirl. Lively's upbringing was left to Lucy, a young English woman, who was first her nurse and then her governess. The author's impressionistic portraits of Egypt, Alexandria and Palestine evoke sights and smells that are, in many respects, no longer accessible. Already suffering emotionally from parental neglect, Lively was further traumatized when her return to England caused her... |
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Heat Wave |
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| Author: |
Penelope Lively |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Paperback |
| ISBN: |
0060928557 |
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| Availability: |
Ships within 3-4 days. |
Book Review
The weather is blistering but the emotions are chilly in this intimate, elegant novel set in the British countryside during a summer of record heat. A mother is watching the end of her daughter's marriage while confronting her own simmering anger over the infidelity of her own departed husband, years before. Penelope Lively's intense but muted style mirrors the detached anguish of her characters, who are groping toward their true feelings.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
Lively (Moon Tiger) considers the bliss of romantic love, and its frequently tragic disillusionment, in her 11th satisfying novel, which provides further evidence of her ability to build a fascinating plot from minutely observed character. Ensconced in... |
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Spiderweb |
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| Author: |
Penelope Lively |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Paperback |
| ISBN: |
0060929723 |
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| Availability: |
Print-on-demand title. Ships within 5-15 days. |
Book Review
The author of 16 previous works of fiction, Penelope Lively almost invariably lives up to her name. She knows, in other words, how to animate a comedy of manners--how to bring its participants to eccentric and intriguing life. Take Stella Brentwood, the 65-year-old anthropologist at the center of Spiderweb. This lifelong student of human behavior is the sort of mouthpiece most authors would die for: who better to record our foibles and self-destructive follies? Yet Stella is also a career outsider who's never stood still long enough to get her bearings: "In her trade, you travelled most fruitfully if you travelled alone. And it helped if you were footloose and singularly unfettered by personal possessions." Now, however, Stella is ready for retirement. And once she takes the plunge, buying a cottage in rural Somerset,... |
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House Unlocked |
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| Author: |
Penelope Lively |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Paperback |
| ISBN: |
0802140076 |
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From Publishers Weekly
Using "the furnishings of a house as a mnemonic system," Lively (Moon Tiger) takes readers on an imaginary tour of Golsoncott, the Edwardian country house her grandparents bought in 1923, home to several generations of her family. She recalls the gong stand in the entryway (a symbol of "vanished rituals" calling the family to its meals) and her grandmother's intricately worked sampler, with its row of "skinnies" (representing evacuated children boarding at Golsoncott during WWII) just a few of the many objects that "spun a shining thread of reference" to another era and way of life. In this combination personal/social history, Lively tells of how even the layout of the rooms spoke to changes in thinking over the course of the century. Children were quartered in a nursery wing, far from the adults, not at the... |
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According to Mark |
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| Author: |
Penelope Lively |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Paperback |
| ISBN: |
0060971991 |
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| Availability: |
This title is not currently available. |
From Publishers Weekly
Despite its title, the book isn't gospel, nor does its eponymous hero invoke any power higher than middle age for his infatuation with Carrie Summers, the papers of whose renowned grandfather he is researching for a biography. Carrie, a charming, freckled, half-educated maverick, has turned the great man's estate into a garden center and is more interested in the needs of her flowers than to Mark Lamming's importunings. In the event, however, he persuades her to drive with him to France to interview her flighty mother; on the way they make love, an activity in which Carrie participates with pagan-like wholeheartedness. But when Mark's wife joins them, Carrie runs away to Paris, there to meet a man for whom she feels a yearning so uncontrollable that, newly tender and perceptive, she grieves for poor Mark. Thus... |
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The Book of Fabulous Questions: Great Conversation Starters about Love, Sex and Other Personal Stuff |
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| Author: |
Penelope Frohart |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Paperback |
| ISBN: |
0966114469 |
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| Availability: |
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News Journal, Ohio, Terry Mapes
REFERENCE BOOK COVERS LOTS OF STUFF The publisher labels The Book of Fabulous Questions by Penelope Frohart (BRG Publishing) as humor; but to me it seems more like a reference book. Anyway, I'm including it in a column about new reference books. True, "The Book of Fabulous Questions" does generate a few laughs, such as when you try to imagine what might happen if you actually used some of these questions as conversation starters: "Have you ever dated anyone who was married?" "Do you snore?" "Are you silent or noisy during sex?" Nevertheless, this book, consisting entirely of questions, has many practical applications. Suppose you're going on a first date with someone and are afraid you won't have something to talk about. Consult the book ahead of time and when conversations lags, ask, "What was... |
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A House Unlocked |
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| Author: |
Penelope Lively |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Hardcover |
| ISBN: |
0753197324 |
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| Availability: |
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From Publishers Weekly
Using "the furnishings of a house as a mnemonic system," Lively (Moon Tiger) takes readers on an imaginary tour of Golsoncott, the Edwardian country house her grandparents bought in 1923, home to several generations of her family. She recalls the gong stand in the entryway (a symbol of "vanished rituals" calling the family to its meals) and her grandmother's intricately worked sampler, with its row of "skinnies" (representing evacuated children boarding at Golsoncott during WWII) just a few of the many objects that "spun a shining thread of reference" to another era and way of life. In this combination personal/social history, Lively tells of how even the layout of the rooms spoke to changes in thinking over the course of the century. Children were quartered in a nursery wing, far from the adults, not at the... |
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Making It Up |
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| Author: |
Penelope Lively |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Paperback |
| ISBN: |
0143037846 |
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| Availability: |
Your order will ship upon release. |
Book Review
Making It Up, Booker Prize-winning author Penelope Lively's cleverly termed "anti-memoir," is an enthralling examination of how both fate and free will can dramatically alter the lives of each and every one of us. Each of Lively's expertly crafted stories reveals the life she could have lived, had she, or another, chosen a different path. Yet in answering a series of "what if" questions, Lively does more than indulge her imagination; rather, she challenges her readers to examine the consequences of both the significant, and the seemingly trivial decisions we make every day. Each of the stories in Making It Up deals with a different stage of Lively's life, and examines fictional alternatives to the roads she and others traveled. The Mozambique Channel charts the course of Shirley, a British nanny who... |
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A House Unlocked |
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| Author: |
Penelope Lively |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Paperback |
| ISBN: |
0753197332 |
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| Availability: |
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From Publishers Weekly
Using "the furnishings of a house as a mnemonic system," Lively (Moon Tiger) takes readers on an imaginary tour of Golsoncott, the Edwardian country house her grandparents bought in 1923, home to several generations of her family. She recalls the gong stand in the entryway (a symbol of "vanished rituals" calling the family to its meals) and her grandmother's intricately worked sampler, with its row of "skinnies" (representing evacuated children boarding at Golsoncott during WWII) just a few of the many objects that "spun a shining thread of reference" to another era and way of life. In this combination personal/social history, Lively tells of how even the layout of the rooms spoke to changes in thinking over the course of the century. Children were quartered in a nursery wing, far from the adults, not at the... |
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Goldilocks and the Three Bears |
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| Author: |
Debi Gliori |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Paperback |
| ISBN: |
0340877855 |
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| Availability: |
Ships within 2-3 days. |
From the Publisher
Rediscover the magic of the world’s best–loved fairy tales, now enchantingly reimagined by an exceptional group of writers and illustrators. A must for every child’s bookshelf.
About the Author
Penelope Lively has written over 18 books for children, and over 15 titles for adults, distinguishing herself on both levels. Among the awards she has received are the coveted Booker Prize for the adult novel "Moon Tiger" (1987) and the Carnegie Medal for the highly acclaimed juvenile work, "The Ghost of Thomas Kempe" (1973). In Lively's writing, for both adults and children, the recurrent theme is interpreting the past through exploring the function of memory. "My particular preoccupation as a writer is with memory. Both with memory in the historical sense and memory... |
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My Antonia |
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| Author: |
Willa Cather |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Paperback |
| ISBN: |
0460877232 |
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| Availability: |
This title is not currently available. |
Book Review
It seems almost sacrilege to infringe upon a book as soulful and rich as Willa Cather's My Ántonia by offering comment. First published in 1918, and set in Nebraska in the late 19th century, this tale of the spirited daughter of a Bohemian immigrant family planning to farm on the untamed land ("not a country at all but the material out of which countries are made") comes to us through the romantic eyes of Jim Burden. He is, at the time of their meeting, newly orphaned and arriving at his grandparents' neighboring farm on the same night her family strikes out to make good in their new country. Jim chooses the opening words of his recollections deliberately: "I first heard of Ántonia on what seemed to be an interminable journey across the great midland plain of North America," and it seems almost certain that... |
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The Songs of the Kings |
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| Author: |
Barry Unsworth |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Paperback |
| ISBN: |
0393322831 |
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| Availability: |
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From Publishers Weekly
Provocative and subversive, Unsworth's new novel rewrites ancient history to show how a wily, ambitious and power-hungry man can distort the truth, convince the masses to support him and incite his country to wage war. It's an audacious blending of myth with sharp contemporary resonance. The setting is Aulis in 1260 B.C., where unfavorable winds are keeping the fleet of the Greek expeditionary force (actually a motley assemblage of hostile and predatory tribes loosely united under Agamemnon) from setting out to capture Troy. The pretext is revenge for the "rape" of Helen by Paris, but Agamemnon and such tribal leaders as Achilles and Odysseus are, in fact, lusting for the fabled treasures of Troy, spoils of war that each man, down to the most common soldier, yearns to possess. Unsworth (Sacred Hunger) reveals... |
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What Masie Knew |
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| Author: |
Henry James |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Paperback |
| ISBN: |
0460878506 |
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| Availability: |
Usually ships within 3-5 weeks. We cannot guarantee availability of special order titles because publishers may run out of stock. We will notify you in 3-4 weeks if we are unable to get this title for you. |
Review
?Reading Henry James is like putting a new faculty to the test. This is the true morality.??Anita Brookner
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
Book Description
In What Maisie Knew (1897), the daughter of acrimoniously divorced parents is pawned for their power contests. The only thing her parents agree on is that this grave little girl be seen and not heard: so she learns to keep her own counsel, as the follies of adulthood are paraded before her. Intelligent, observant, Maisie seems to be the only grown-up in a world of petulance and spite.
See all Editorial Reviews
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