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A review by larrys
The House in Norham Gardens by Penelope Lively
2.0
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.