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sense_of_history 's review for:
Moon Tiger
by Penelope Lively
World History within one Life
This story appears to be a kind of pulp fiction: that of a remarkable woman, Claudia Hampton, looking back on her life, on her deathbed, and with a passionate love affaire as crucial ax. But don't get me wrong: this really is a very interesting book and even a tough read. This review can never do justice to that.
In the first place it is the story of a woman with a very unconventional attitude, confronting everything society expects of her. In the private sphere she has an on- and off-relationship with the father of her child, she refuses to fulfil the traditional motherhood role; in the public sphere she becomes a war-correspondent, publishes historical books that confront traditional academic (male) historians, etc. Lively does not present her as a heroin, on the contrary, Claudia is bluntly unsympathetic and selfish.
Secondly, the book illustrates very handsomely the entangled character of individual lifes and world history. Claudia constantly philosophizes about her (rather insignificant) place in history. People contain the whole history of the universe in their bodies and in their mind, but to them history feels very strange, very far from their own lifes. The official, academic history even seems to obliterate the essence of life. In this sense this book is a typical postmodernist reflection on the relativity of history (everything is story, there are only personal stories).
Lively also focusses on the subjective nature of experiences (including that of time), and on the problematic relation between language and reality. All in all, she's a worthy representant of the postmodernist literature, next to Julian Barnes and Graham Swift.
This story appears to be a kind of pulp fiction: that of a remarkable woman, Claudia Hampton, looking back on her life, on her deathbed, and with a passionate love affaire as crucial ax. But don't get me wrong: this really is a very interesting book and even a tough read. This review can never do justice to that.
In the first place it is the story of a woman with a very unconventional attitude, confronting everything society expects of her. In the private sphere she has an on- and off-relationship with the father of her child, she refuses to fulfil the traditional motherhood role; in the public sphere she becomes a war-correspondent, publishes historical books that confront traditional academic (male) historians, etc. Lively does not present her as a heroin, on the contrary, Claudia is bluntly unsympathetic and selfish.
Secondly, the book illustrates very handsomely the entangled character of individual lifes and world history. Claudia constantly philosophizes about her (rather insignificant) place in history. People contain the whole history of the universe in their bodies and in their mind, but to them history feels very strange, very far from their own lifes. The official, academic history even seems to obliterate the essence of life. In this sense this book is a typical postmodernist reflection on the relativity of history (everything is story, there are only personal stories).
Lively also focusses on the subjective nature of experiences (including that of time), and on the problematic relation between language and reality. All in all, she's a worthy representant of the postmodernist literature, next to Julian Barnes and Graham Swift.