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A review by slippy_underfoot
Next to Nature, Art by Penelope Lively
3.0
Well that was fun. I love Penelope Lively’s books, she has a gift for finding such wit and depth in the trials of everyday living.
It’s the mid-Seventies and the current owner of a large, crumbling, country house runs a creative retreat for “ordinary people” to come and get a glimpse of the artistic life. The most recent influx arrive at a time when the ongoing tensions between the self-obsessed resident artists are at a peak.
Initially overawed by the - clearly mediocre - artists and their work, the new arrivals soon start to perceive the cracks in the facade, cracks that their own petty rivalries and intrigues begin to widen.
In the middle of this is Mary, a decent, wise, and kind woman, in her early middle age, who sees them all - artists and attendees - for what they are, and who starts to resent the baser emotions they cause in her.
Mary is considered by the artists as quite the most ordinary of this particular batch of “ordinary people” - she’s so unmoved by their posturing - so the fact that she has genuine artistic ability is unsettling for them all.
Lively really captures that particular unreality which extended residential events bring about. Reading this reminded me so much of my week of residential studies with the Open University in the mid-Nineties. The joke at the time was that it was called the Open University because open was how most people left their bedrooms doors…
It’s the mid-Seventies and the current owner of a large, crumbling, country house runs a creative retreat for “ordinary people” to come and get a glimpse of the artistic life. The most recent influx arrive at a time when the ongoing tensions between the self-obsessed resident artists are at a peak.
Initially overawed by the - clearly mediocre - artists and their work, the new arrivals soon start to perceive the cracks in the facade, cracks that their own petty rivalries and intrigues begin to widen.
In the middle of this is Mary, a decent, wise, and kind woman, in her early middle age, who sees them all - artists and attendees - for what they are, and who starts to resent the baser emotions they cause in her.
Mary is considered by the artists as quite the most ordinary of this particular batch of “ordinary people” - she’s so unmoved by their posturing - so the fact that she has genuine artistic ability is unsettling for them all.
Lively really captures that particular unreality which extended residential events bring about. Reading this reminded me so much of my week of residential studies with the Open University in the mid-Nineties. The joke at the time was that it was called the Open University because open was how most people left their bedrooms doors…