I love all Penelope Lively’s writing but this is my favourite. She has beautifully constructed a story spanning three generations from 1935 to the present day. The lives of Lorna, her daughter Molly and granddaughter Ruth are woven together seamlessly, making it a very satisfying read. Ruth’s visit to the Somerset cottage where Lorna and Matt spent their fleeting time together brings the novel full-circle. The fresco Matt painted as an impoverished artist for Lorna has been recently uncovered: a testament to their blissful marriage before War intervened to part them.
The walls. Dancing figures. Pink. Nude, but discreetly so. Male and female. Who hold out their arms to one another, link arms, swirl around the walls of the room.
Why is Penelope Lively one of my favourite novelists?
She writes thoughtfully, beautifully, sparingly.
She turns and there is the postman, so she smiles, and waves.
But the postman is neither smiling nor waving. He has a new look on his face she does not recognise.
But I realise it is her characters I like, time and again. They are kind, sensitive and honourable and that is what draws me back each time.
Wednesday, 15 September 2010
Tuesday, 14 September 2010
My House in Umbria by William Trevor
This short novel is one of two contained in the volume: Two Lives. My husband and I love William Trevor’s stories although they are unbearably sad. I once lent a neighbour a video of an adaptation of his novel Fools of Fortune and she was shocked by how heart-wrenching it was. How could we bear to watch it? It is one of my favourite films.
My House in Umbria was made into a film too starring Maggie Smith – the settings were exquisite but the ending spoilt by being much more cheerful than was portrayed in the novel.
Elizabeth Delahunty is flawed from childhood. This encourages her to write romantic fiction:
I fear abandonment and have instictively avoided it as a fictional subject. The girls of my romances were never left by lovers who took from them what they would. Mothers did not turn their backs on little children. Wives did not pitifully plead or in bitterness cuckold their husbands. The sombre side of things did not appeal to me; in my works I dealt with happiness ever after.
And so she lives in a beautiful house in Umbria, wears lovely clothes and stays in elegant hotels until one day she is seated on a train to Milan. A bomb explodes in her carriage and, on leaving hospital, invites a few others from Carrozza 219 to recuperate and stay at her villa. Her imagination as a romantic novelist knows no bounds as their lives become woven together through circumstance. And so she tells her story.
William Trevor writes beautifully, compelling that story to heard.
Except to write about that summer I have never since sat down at my black Olympia, and never shall again. I haven’t learned much, only that love is different among survivors.
My House in Umbria was made into a film too starring Maggie Smith – the settings were exquisite but the ending spoilt by being much more cheerful than was portrayed in the novel.
Elizabeth Delahunty is flawed from childhood. This encourages her to write romantic fiction:
I fear abandonment and have instictively avoided it as a fictional subject. The girls of my romances were never left by lovers who took from them what they would. Mothers did not turn their backs on little children. Wives did not pitifully plead or in bitterness cuckold their husbands. The sombre side of things did not appeal to me; in my works I dealt with happiness ever after.
And so she lives in a beautiful house in Umbria, wears lovely clothes and stays in elegant hotels until one day she is seated on a train to Milan. A bomb explodes in her carriage and, on leaving hospital, invites a few others from Carrozza 219 to recuperate and stay at her villa. Her imagination as a romantic novelist knows no bounds as their lives become woven together through circumstance. And so she tells her story.
William Trevor writes beautifully, compelling that story to heard.
Except to write about that summer I have never since sat down at my black Olympia, and never shall again. I haven’t learned much, only that love is different among survivors.
The Small Hand by Susan Hill
This book is ‘hot off the press’, unlike a lot books I enjoy reading and re-reading.
I admire Susan Hill’s ability to tell a story clearly and succinctly in 167 pages. So many new books are far too long and much less satisfying to read. A good short novel can be read, again and again, savouring descriptions of people and places. I always enjoy her books and this one is very special.
Susan Hill has a particular forte for writing ghost stories such as this one. I’m going to recommend it to friends so we can discuss it further – the strange meeting between Adam Snow and the old woman at the White House, the photograph albums and the tended garden is masterful in making the reader wonder what is really going on there… In fact I need to read it again, slowly, carefully a second time. But not yet, because I’m too scared!
It will make an excellent audio book as long as one is not listening while driving along country lanes in Sussex or the remote mountains of the Vercors!
I admire Susan Hill’s ability to tell a story clearly and succinctly in 167 pages. So many new books are far too long and much less satisfying to read. A good short novel can be read, again and again, savouring descriptions of people and places. I always enjoy her books and this one is very special.
Susan Hill has a particular forte for writing ghost stories such as this one. I’m going to recommend it to friends so we can discuss it further – the strange meeting between Adam Snow and the old woman at the White House, the photograph albums and the tended garden is masterful in making the reader wonder what is really going on there… In fact I need to read it again, slowly, carefully a second time. But not yet, because I’m too scared!
It will make an excellent audio book as long as one is not listening while driving along country lanes in Sussex or the remote mountains of the Vercors!
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