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3.75 AVERAGE
3.75 AVERAGE
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
This short and exquisite story is about magic and is actually magic. Nothing happens and nothing needs happen to make it perfect
An atmospheric and vivid book, this captures a few months in the life of Clare, when she is 14. It's a bleak January in Oxford in the early 1970s, and Clare lives with her two great-aunts who are both around 80 years old. They were dynamic and imaginative women from a wealthy background, but are now living in a quiet twilight, where the past seems more important than the present. At its heart, this story is about how Clare reconciles her aunts' ageing, and the knowledge that they will one day die. An orphan, Clare knows about loss, and tries to make the possessions within the old house at Norham Gardens root her to the present. Penelope Lively is wonderful at writing about the passing of time, and the loss of the past, and the way the present cannot be recaptured. Her portrait of Clare, the snowy winter, and the lives of Clare's aunts, is beautifully evoked, and I was very moved.
I'd known about this book for a long time, and I had decided not to read it because of the initial paragraph, which describes a man in New Guinea around the turn of the century, including this sentence, "The man is remote from England in distance by half the circumference of the world: in understanding, by five thousand years." I knew I would be annoyed by the assumption that indigenous people are "primitive" and that Western Europe is the pinnacle of all knowledge, and I was repeatedly frustrated and angered by Lively's depictions of New Guinea throughout the book. In the strand of the book in 1970, Clare needs to let go of some aspects of the past, beautiful as it is, so she can fully live her life. Thematically, this is compared to tribes within New Guinea, who give up a traditional way of life in order to live in the modern world. But these two things are in no way comparable. The destruction and desecration of indigenous people and their lands continues to this day, and there is no excuse for the ways these people were and are denied agency, respect, or the right to keep their own lands. Lively is making excuses for imperialism and colonialism, and trying to erase violence.
So while I found many aspects of this book really enjoyable, I can't rate it highly, because it's another story trying to make the British empire sound cosy and positive, and to make excuses for the destruction of people's lives.
I'd known about this book for a long time, and I had decided not to read it because of the initial paragraph, which describes a man in New Guinea around the turn of the century, including this sentence, "The man is remote from England in distance by half the circumference of the world: in understanding, by five thousand years." I knew I would be annoyed by the assumption that indigenous people are "primitive" and that Western Europe is the pinnacle of all knowledge, and I was repeatedly frustrated and angered by Lively's depictions of New Guinea throughout the book. In the strand of the book in 1970, Clare needs to let go of some aspects of the past, beautiful as it is, so she can fully live her life. Thematically, this is compared to tribes within New Guinea, who give up a traditional way of life in order to live in the modern world. But these two things are in no way comparable. The destruction and desecration of indigenous people and their lands continues to this day, and there is no excuse for the ways these people were and are denied agency, respect, or the right to keep their own lands. Lively is making excuses for imperialism and colonialism, and trying to erase violence.
So while I found many aspects of this book really enjoyable, I can't rate it highly, because it's another story trying to make the British empire sound cosy and positive, and to make excuses for the destruction of people's lives.
A really touching and enjoyable story of a girl engaging in her own peculiar way with the contemporary world and the world of her family’s past, through an enigmatic artefact. Great stuff.
This was a strange and rather unsettling book in many ways. It has some of the classic elements of the time slip novel, but where, in say, Tom's Midnight Garden, Tom is aware of moving between times and takes an active part in what happens, Clare is a more passive participant. In some ways this is more like a ghost story than anything else, except there is no ghost. Like Tom's Midnight Garden, it deals with a child's sense of their own mortality and what time and ageing mean both to themselves and to those around them. Set in North Oxford in a freezing winter where everything seems to stand still and summer feels like it will never come again, this is an atmospheric and haunting novel.
An atmospheric and vivid book, this captures a few months in the life of Clare, when she is 14. It's a bleak January in Oxford in the early 1970s, and Clare lives with her two great-aunts who are both around 80 years old. They were dynamic and imaginative women from a wealthy background, but are now living in a quiet twilight, where the past seems more important than the present. At its heart, this story is about how Clare reconciles her aunts' ageing, and the knowledge that they will one day die. An orphan, Clare knows about loss, and tries to make the possessions within the old house at Norham Gardens root her to the present. Penelope Lively is wonderful at writing about the passing of time, and the loss of the past, and the way the present cannot be recaptured. Her portrait of Clare, the snowy winter, and the lives of Clare's aunts, is beautifully evoked, and I was very moved.
I'd known about this book for a long time, and I had decided not to read it because of the initial paragraph, which describes a man in New Guinea around the turn of the century, including this sentence, "The man is remote from England in distance by half the circumference of the world: in understanding, by five thousand years." I knew I would be annoyed by the assumption that indigenous people are "primitive" and that Western Europe is the pinnacle of all knowledge, and I was repeatedly frustrated and angered by Lively's depictions of New Guinea throughout the book. In the strand of the book in 1970, Clare needs to let go of some aspects of the past, beautiful as it is, so she can fully live her life. Thematically, this is compared to tribes within New Guinea, who give up a traditional way of life in order to live in the modern world. But these two things are in no way comparable. The destruction and desecration of indigenous people and their lands continues to this day, and there is no excuse for the ways these people were and are denied agency, respect, or the right to keep their own lands. Lively is making excuses for imperialism and colonialism, and trying to erase violence.
So while I found many aspects of this book really enjoyable, I can't rate it highly, because it's another story trying to make the British empire sound cosy and positive, and to make excuses for the destruction of people's lives.
I'd known about this book for a long time, and I had decided not to read it because of the initial paragraph, which describes a man in New Guinea around the turn of the century, including this sentence, "The man is remote from England in distance by half the circumference of the world: in understanding, by five thousand years." I knew I would be annoyed by the assumption that indigenous people are "primitive" and that Western Europe is the pinnacle of all knowledge, and I was repeatedly frustrated and angered by Lively's depictions of New Guinea throughout the book. In the strand of the book in 1970, Clare needs to let go of some aspects of the past, beautiful as it is, so she can fully live her life. Thematically, this is compared to tribes within New Guinea, who give up a traditional way of life in order to live in the modern world. But these two things are in no way comparable. The destruction and desecration of indigenous people and their lands continues to this day, and there is no excuse for the ways these people were and are denied agency, respect, or the right to keep their own lands. Lively is making excuses for imperialism and colonialism, and trying to erase violence.
So while I found many aspects of this book really enjoyable, I can't rate it highly, because it's another story trying to make the British empire sound cosy and positive, and to make excuses for the destruction of people's lives.
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
adventurous
lighthearted
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
At first I wondered why the protagonist was talking like a middle-aged woman and then I realised that Clare today would be in her mid-fifties. This got me wondering about how we don't really 'turn into middle aged women' -- we somehow cement our ways of speaking and our views on the world, and it's the world around us that changes.
The opening paragraph of this book is wonderfully spooky and introduces the House In Norham Gardens as a character in its own right. But overall the story didn't hold my attention. It's always interesting to read a retro young adult novel and see how stories have changed. This one feels dated for its entries on a tribe in Papua New Guinea (which I wasn't interested in at all -- I ended up skipping them), and for the fascination of a black man from Uganda befriending a white girl from somewhere near Oxford. This relationship seems a bit strange to me today, but perhaps for different reasons.
This book reminded me a lot of See You Thursday by Jean Ure. Apart from the shared setting:
Women (one a teenage protagonist) live together and take in a boarder
The boarder is young and male and distinctive in some way (one for being blind, the other for being black in a time when this was less common in England)
The young men both work for educational institutions
These young men have a certain allure for the female protagonist
The girls each live in highly articulate households with much very English-sounding banter taking place.
If you liked this book, I do recommend the one by Jean Ure. Both of these stories are interesting as a trip back to 1970s England.
The opening paragraph of this book is wonderfully spooky and introduces the House In Norham Gardens as a character in its own right. But overall the story didn't hold my attention. It's always interesting to read a retro young adult novel and see how stories have changed. This one feels dated for its entries on a tribe in Papua New Guinea (which I wasn't interested in at all -- I ended up skipping them), and for the fascination of a black man from Uganda befriending a white girl from somewhere near Oxford. This relationship seems a bit strange to me today, but perhaps for different reasons.
This book reminded me a lot of See You Thursday by Jean Ure. Apart from the shared setting:
Women (one a teenage protagonist) live together and take in a boarder
The boarder is young and male and distinctive in some way (one for being blind, the other for being black in a time when this was less common in England)
The young men both work for educational institutions
These young men have a certain allure for the female protagonist
The girls each live in highly articulate households with much very English-sounding banter taking place.
If you liked this book, I do recommend the one by Jean Ure. Both of these stories are interesting as a trip back to 1970s England.
This is such an interesting book. I love books with strange settings like crumbling mansions/castles and the characters were wonderful too. I think adults would actually like it more than children.