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A review by marc129
Ammonites and Leaping Fish: A Life in Time by Penelope Lively
2.0
Years ago Penelope Lively surprised me with [b:Moon Tiger|130028|Moon Tiger|Penelope Lively|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1437960165s/130028.jpg|2877263], a fine autobiographical exploration of the past by a rather eccentric and unreliable female narrator. It seemed to me that Lively had made it her trademark in literature to explore the vigour and reality of the past, because the theme is also dealt with in other books of her.
This booklet she wrote at the age of 80, in her own modest style, not as a memoir but as a "view from old day". She muses about the passing of time (faster as you get older), the inconveniences and challenges of aging, but also the benefits of 'becoming slightly invisible', and especially the blessing of memory, as an instrument for travelling through the past. But above all she opens a perspective on old age as a kind of liberating phase in life: “I think there is a sea-change, in old age – a metamorphosis of the sensibilities. With those old consuming vigours now muted, something else comes into its own – an almost luxurious appreciation of the world that your are still in. Spring was never so vibrant, autumn never so richly gold.”
Lively recalls personal memories, quite jumpy and random; she dwells for a long time on the bliss of reading (“it frees me from the closet of my own mind. Reading fiction, I see through the prism of another person’s understanding; reading everything else, I am travelling…”) and brings a nice ode to books. Maybe Lively opens a lot of open doors, and offers no more than some musings that will mainly be enjoyed by the fans, but oh well, she does so with style.
And last but not least, she reminds us of her most important lesson in life: that the past really exists, is real in our lives, if only in the form of a few ancient earthenware plates with leaping fish on it: “The past is irretrievable, but it lurks. It sends out tantalizing messages, coded signals in the form of a clay pipe stem, a smashed wine bottle. Two leaping fish from twelfth-century Cairo. I can't begin to understand what that time was like, or how the men who made them lived, but I can know that it all happened - that old Cairo existed, and a particular potter. To have the leaping fish sherd on my mantelpiece - and all those other sherds in the cake tin - expands my concept of time. There is a further dimension to memory; it is not just a private asset, but something vast, collective, resonant. And all because fragments of detritus survive, and I can consider them.”
This booklet she wrote at the age of 80, in her own modest style, not as a memoir but as a "view from old day". She muses about the passing of time (faster as you get older), the inconveniences and challenges of aging, but also the benefits of 'becoming slightly invisible', and especially the blessing of memory, as an instrument for travelling through the past. But above all she opens a perspective on old age as a kind of liberating phase in life: “I think there is a sea-change, in old age – a metamorphosis of the sensibilities. With those old consuming vigours now muted, something else comes into its own – an almost luxurious appreciation of the world that your are still in. Spring was never so vibrant, autumn never so richly gold.”
Lively recalls personal memories, quite jumpy and random; she dwells for a long time on the bliss of reading (“it frees me from the closet of my own mind. Reading fiction, I see through the prism of another person’s understanding; reading everything else, I am travelling…”) and brings a nice ode to books. Maybe Lively opens a lot of open doors, and offers no more than some musings that will mainly be enjoyed by the fans, but oh well, she does so with style.
And last but not least, she reminds us of her most important lesson in life: that the past really exists, is real in our lives, if only in the form of a few ancient earthenware plates with leaping fish on it: “The past is irretrievable, but it lurks. It sends out tantalizing messages, coded signals in the form of a clay pipe stem, a smashed wine bottle. Two leaping fish from twelfth-century Cairo. I can't begin to understand what that time was like, or how the men who made them lived, but I can know that it all happened - that old Cairo existed, and a particular potter. To have the leaping fish sherd on my mantelpiece - and all those other sherds in the cake tin - expands my concept of time. There is a further dimension to memory; it is not just a private asset, but something vast, collective, resonant. And all because fragments of detritus survive, and I can consider them.”