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