Product details
Biographical note
Penelope Lively is the author of many prize-winning novels and short-story collections for both adults and children. She has twice been shortlisted for the Booker Prize: once in 1977 for her first novel, The Road to Lichfield, and again in 1984 for According to Mark. She later won the 1987 Booker Prize for her highly acclaimed novel Moon Tiger. Her other books include Oleander, Jacaranda, a memoir of her childhood days in Egypt; Spiderweb; her autobiographical work, A House Unlocked; The Photograph; Making It Up; Consequences; Family Album, which was shortlisted for the 2009 Costa Novel Award, and How It All Began. She is a popular writer for children and has won both the Carnegie Medal and the Whitbread Award. She was appointed CBE in the 2001 New Year's Honours List, and DBE in 2012. Penelope Lively lives in London.<b>Carefully thought-out</b> stories. . . <b>Patterns of interaction</b> between <b>past and present</b> are <b>sounded out</b> to <b>good effect</b>.
Sunday Times
Lively has <b>guts</b> and <b>style</b>. . . <b>You are in the hands of a master</b>
Daily Mail
Her new collection of short stories is <b>perfect</b>. It is a <b>very wide range</b> of short stories and <b>each one has an unexpected twist in the tale</b>.
Kirsty Lang
<b>Thoughtful</b>, <b>intelligent </b>and <b>light of touch</b> . . . <b>Lively has the gift, rare and wonderful</b>, of being able to <b>peel back the layers</b> one by one and set them before us, <b>translucent and gleaming</b>.
Sunday Telegraph
<b>Spry </b>and <b>world-wise</b>, <i>The Purple Swamp Hen</i> is <b>an enchanting story</b> that <b>sets the tone </b>for the rest of this <b>stellar collection</b>.
Observer
More stylish than many writers half her age . . . Lively knows a thing or two about storytelling.
The Times on How It All Began
Lively is now nearly 80 but, as <i>How It All Began</i> shows, there is no diminution of her skills . . . Lively is a writer of craft and sagacity and such old fashioned virtues trump the chic but meretricious every time.
Financial Times on How It All Began
Penelope Lively at her best, sharp-eyed but sympathetic, deftly steering the reader from one point of view to another. This novel should delight her regular readers and ensnare new ones.
Evening Standard on Family Album
Lively skilfully mingles past and present, as she peels away the layers to uncover a family secret of which no one speaks...Lively's astute skewering of family relations reverberates in the mind long afterwards.
Daily Mail on Family Album
Gorgeous
David Vann on Family Album, Guardian Books of the Year
'Lively remains a sublime storyteller' Guardian on How It All Began
'More stylish than many writers half her age . . . Lively knows a thing of two about storytelling.' The Times on How It All Began
A dream house that is hiding something sinister; two women having lunch who share a husband; an old woman doing her weekly supermarket shop with a secret past that no one could guess; a couple who don't know each other at all even after fifteen years together; and, in the story from which this collection takes its name, a bird and a servant girl in ancient Pompeii who cannot converse, but share a perfect understanding.
In this new and varied collection of short stories, Penelope Lively shows that she remains a master of her craft, and one of our finest English writers.