My Sunday mornings
are filled with the dawn sky, a cup of tea, the sounds of birds at the feeders,
and The New York Times Book Review. The first feature in the review I look for is
“By the Book” – usually an interview with an author who has a new book or won a
prize. Recently, the column featured
Alice Hoffman. The most interesting
question in this series is the interviewees “favorite overlooked or
under-appreciated writer.” Hoffman
mentioned Penelope Lively, so I decided to read Moon Tiger, Lively’s 1987 Man Booker Prize-winning novel.
According to her
website, Penelope was born in Cairo, Egypt.
She came to England at the age of twelve and went to boarding school in
Sussex. She subsequently read Modern
History at St. Anne's College, Oxford. Lively
now has six grandchildren and lives in London.
She has written 20 novels along with several works of non-fiction and a
whole shelf of children’s books.
Moon Tiger is the story of Claudia Hampton, who lies in a bed and passes in and
out of consciousness. She has written
historical works and decides she will write a history of the world. The novel alternates between lucid moments,
plans for the history, and remembering her visits to those places. When doctors, nurses, her daughter, Lisa, or
her sister-in-law, Sylvia, stop by for visits, she chats a bit but then falls
asleep. She delineates the chapters of
her book, but she always slides toward recalling visits to those places while a
correspondent during World War II. Interestingly enough, these “out-of-consciousness”
moments shift between first and third person accounts. The “History of the World” slowly devolves
into a “History of Claudia.”
I found these changes
in point of view a bit disconcerting at first, but once I became accustomed to
them, the novel carried me along to Egypt.
From that point on, I could hardly put it down.
Claudia has some disdain
for Sylvia. Lively writes, “She has
given little trouble. She has devoted
herself to children and houses. A nice,
old-fashioned girl, Mother called her, at their third meeting, seeing quite
correctly through the superficial disguise of pink fingernails, swirling New
Look skirts and a cloud of Mitsouko cologne spray. There was a proper wedding, which Mother
loved, with arum lilies, little bridesmaids and a marquee on the lawn of
Sylvia’s parents’ home at Farnham. I
declined to be matron of honour and Gordon got rather drunk at the
reception. They spent their honeymoon in
Spain and Sylvia settled down to live, as she thought, happily ever after in
North Oxford” (23). I detected a note of
jealousy, because Claudia and Gordon were rather close.
 |
| Penelope Lively |
--Chiron, 3/7/14
No comments:
Post a Comment