Penelope Lively Libri

Raggiunta la boa della mezz'età, Mark Lamming si sente una persona realizzata: anche se non naviga nell'oro, infatti, il suo sogno di bambino di diventare un uomo di lettere si è avverato e adesso è un rispettabile biografo. Insieme alla moglie Diana, donna pragmatica e di classe, impiegata in una rinomata galleria d'arte londinese, si gode i piaceri e la tranquilla routine di un'intimità condivisa da vent'anni. Mark sta scrivendo un libro su Gilbert Strong, saggista conservatore d'inizio secolo per cui nutre una sconfinata ammirazione. Convinto di sapere praticamente tutto di lui, di fronte a due grandi bauli pieni di fogli ingialliti rinvenuti a Dean Close – la casa dello scrittore nel Dorset – è costretto a ricredersi. I diari rivelano un altro Gilbert Strong, cinico e donnaiolo, disposto a tutto pur di avere successo. Forse a volte le cose non sono come sembrano. Dopo la prima notte trascorsa a Dean Close, lo stesso Mark è scombussolato dalla «sensazione di essere una persona diversa da quella che si era alzata dal letto quel mattino» e confessa di sentirsi inspiegabilmente attratto da Carrie, la nipote di Strong, che ha trasformato la residenza di campagna del nonno in un vivaio. Eppure lei, che vive con la testa fra le nuvole in mezzo a conifere e violette e in trent'anni non è mai arrivata in fondo a un libro, è tutt'altro che il suo tipo...

Sette vite trasformate da un singolo, minuscolo evento, travolte dalla valanga scatenata in una mattina di aprile a Londra dallo scippo dell’anziana Charlotte, che costringe la figlia Rose a rinunciare ad accompagnare a Manchester il suo datore di lavoro, Lord Henry Peters, celebre professore di storia, il quale decide allora di portare con sé la nipote Marion, costretta a inviare al proprio amante un messaggio, puntualmente intercettato dalla moglie, che in questo modo scopre loro relazione... Una sequenza apparentemente inarrestabile. Perché se il battito d’ali di una farfalla può scatenare una tempesta, se le dimensioni del naso di Cleopatra avrebbero potuto mutare la storia di Roma – un’idea che affascina il professor Peters –, a maggior ragione le nostre minuscole esistenze personali sono in balia del caso: le scelte che crediamo di compiere sono modellate da circostanze esterne su cui non abbiamo alcun controllo e una persona che non abbiamo mai nemmeno incontrato può alterare per sempre il nostro destino. Penelope Lively mette le sue doti narrative al servizio di questa teoria, seguendo con il consueto sguardo caloroso ed empatico un cast di personaggi cesellati con perizia e amore dentro e fuori dalle loro vicende intrecciate e mostrandoci come, malgrado tante svolte arbitrarie e imprevedibili, l’avventura della vita valga davvero la pena di essere vissuta fino in fondo.

La caduta di Troia, le peregrinazioni di Enea, la discesa negli inferi: queste frasi dalla storia fondamentale di Virgilio continuano a risuonare più di 2.000 anni dopo la sua scrittura, e Penelope Lively racconta questo racconto senza tempo con un ritmo impeccabile, commovente e drammatico. La storia inizia con Enea che fugge dalla città saccheggiata di Troia con suo figlio e suo padre e un compito importante affidatogli da sua madre, Venere: deve trovare una nuova casa per il suo popolo. I lettori lo accompagnano nella sua avventura, dove il pericolo lo attende dietro ogni angolo. Combattendo mostri e giganti, affronta gli elementi e compie una terribile discesa negli inferi, dove gli è concesso uno sguardo nel futuro. Le illustrazioni di Ian Andrew interpretano in modo evocativo i mortali, gli dèi e le dee, e gli sfondi epici di questo racconto classico. Questa introduzione accessibile e avvincente all'Eneide si colloca accanto ai racconti classici di Rosemary Sutcliff dell'Iliade e dell'Odissea di Omero.

Intimate, perceptive, critically acute, funny, and moving, this biography explores the life of one of the finest English novelists of the last century, Penelope Fitzgerald (1916-2000). A great writer who would never describe herself as such, her novels are short, spare masterpieces that are self-concealing and subtle. She won the Booker Prize for Offshore in 1979, and her last work, The Blue Flower, was hailed as genius. Her early novels drew from personal experiences, such as a boat on the Thames in the 1960s and a failing bookshop in Suffolk, while her later works ventured into historical realms, including pre-Revolution Russia and post-war Italy. Fitzgerald's life mirrored the complexity of her fiction, spanning the twentieth century and shifting from a Bishop's Palace to a sinking barge, and from an intellectual family to hardship. First published at sixty and achieving fame at eighty, her story embodies lateness, patience, and a unique form of heroism. Despite being loved and admired, she remained mysterious, often presenting herself as an absent-minded old lady, concealing a sharp intellect and a rich imagination. This brilliant account, penned by a biographer Fitzgerald admired, delves into her life, writing, and enigmatic self with fascination.

Unwelcome ghosts are joined by uninvited dragons, gryphons, Martians, and magicians, in eight twisty stories with everyday English settings

Detached and unwordly paleontologist Howard Beamish is on a journey that is to change his life. Travelling to Nairobi, his plane is forced to land in Marsopolis, the capital of Callimbia, where Cleopatra's sister entertained Antony. Also on the flight is Lucy Faulkner, a journalist with a sketchy knowledge of Callimbia's political turbulence.

This anthology of new writing promotes contemporary literature of the English language from Britain and the rest of the Commonwealth. It contains new names among older, recognizable names and includes short stories, poems, novels in progress and short fiction.

Clare's grandfather brought back a shield from New Guinea seventy years ago, and now Clare's dreams are haunted by images of New Guinea. It is up to her to lay the ghost of an encounter between a Victorian anthropologist and a Stone Age New Guinea tribe to rest. First published in 1974.

In Pack of Cards, Penelope Lively introduces the reader to slivers of the everyday world that are not always open to observation, as she delves into the minutiae of her characters' lives. Whether she writes about a widow on a visit to Russia, a small boy's consignment to boarding school, or an agoraphobic housewife, Penelope Lively takes the reader past the closed curtains, through the locked door, into a world that seems at first mundane and then at second glance, proves to be uniquely memorable.

In Pack of Cards, Penelope Lively introduces the reader to slivers of the everyday world that are not always open to observation, as she delves into the minutiae of her characters' lives. Whether she writes about a widow on a visit to Russia, a small boy's consignment to boarding school, or an agoraphobic housewife, Penelope Lively takes the reader past the closed curtains, through the locked door, into a world that seems at first mundane and then at second glance, proves to be uniquely memorable.

Frances, happily married for many years, and suddenly plunged into mourning. Her international celebrity husband Steve has died leaving her unprepared and vulnerable. This title illuminates two terrifying taboos of the twentieth- century - death and grief.

Wry, compassionate and glittering with wit, Penelope Lively's stories get beneath the everyday to the beating heart of human experience. In intimate tales of growing up and growing old, chance encounters and life-long relationships, Lively explores with keen insight the ways that individuals can become tangled in history, and how small acts ripple through the generations. With two new never-before-published stories alongside treasures from her early writing days, Metamorphosis showcases the very best from a literary master.

Passing On is the eighth novel by Booker Prize winning author Penelope Lively.Helen is fifty-two and Edward forty-nine when Dorothy, their mother, dies, ending her reign of terror and leaving them ill-equipped to deal with their lives. Timid, cautious and naive, Helen makes the charming Giles Carnaby, familiy solicitor, the object of a belated schoolgirl crush, while Edward, free to express his sexuality at last, finds it gets the better of him. Dorothy may be dead and buried, but her iron grip continues to hold them in its power.

A dream house that is hiding something sinister; two women having lunch who share a husband; an old woman doing her weekly supermarket shop with a secret past that no one could guess; a couple who don't know each other at all even after fifteen years together; and, in the story from which this collection takes its name, a bird and a servant girl in ancient Pompeii who cannot converse, but share a perfect understanding

When James and his family move to an ancient cottage in Oxfordshire, odd things start happening. Doors crash open, and strange signs appear, written in an archaic hand. James finds that the ghost is the spirit of Thomas Kempe.

Claudia Hampton, dying in a hospital, remembers a war-time affair with a young tank officer killed in the North African desert war

In 1900 Lady Anna Winterbourne travels to Egypt where she falls in love with Sharif, and Egyptian Nationalist utterly committed to his country's cause. A hundred years later, Isabel Parkman, an American divorcee and a descendant of Anna and Sharif, goes to Egypt, taking with her an old family trunk, inside which are found notebooks and journals which reveal Anna and Sharif's secret.

'Sharp, unsentimental and ruefully funny. A fascinating portrait not only of Lively but of the times through which she has lived' Daily Telegraph 'Clever and poignant . . . there is much to enjoy. This is Lively at her best' Sunday ExpressIn this powerful and compelling 'view from old age', Penelope Lively, at eighty, reports back on what she finds. There are meditations on what it is like to be old as well as on how memory shapes us. There are intriguing examinations of key personal as well as historical moments she has lived through and her thoughts on her own bookishness - both as reader and writer. Lastly, she turns to six treasured possessions to speak eloquently about who she is and where she's been - fragments of memories from a life well lived.'A superb study of memory and of her own voyage into the ninth decade of her life. Lively is a compelling, vitally interested witness to time past' Helen Dunmore, Observer, Books of the Year'Enthralling. Will delight all those who love Lively's novels' Daily Mail

Ann Linton leaves her family in Berkshire and sets up camp in her father's house when he is taken into a nursing home in distant Lichfield. As she shares his last weeks she meets David Fielding, and the love they share brings her feelings into sharp focus.

Pauline is spending the summer at World's End, a cottage somewhere in the middle of England. This year the adjoining cottage is occupied by her daughter Teresa and baby grandson Luke; and, of course, Maurice, the man Teresa married. As the hot months unfold, Maurice grows ever more involved in the book he is writing.

Includes fourteen stories that range from the fantasy of Scheherazade to a dazzling example of chaos theory, depicting in exquisite prose the subtle but significant events that go to create everyday experience.

Maria likes to be alone with her thoughts. She talks to animals and objects, and generally prefers them to people.

Three incisive vignettes of human experience: these short stories are taken from Pack of Cards.

Penelope Lively has turned her considerable literary talent to non-fiction with A House Unlocked, a meandering collection of memories inspired by Golsoncott, the Somerset country home occupied by her family for the greater part of the last century. By walking around the rooms of the house (in her mind) and looking at fondly remembered objects and furniture, she recalls the events, customs and people that together paint a slowly shifting picture of English country life in the 20th century. It is at once personal and social - a diary of the house and its occupants, and a memoir of the historical landscape.

In 1935, privileged misfit Lorna meets the love of her life. Falling for a pennyless and bohemian artist, Matt, she abandons her stuffy Kensington existence in London and moves to a rustic cottage in Somerset. A baby, Molly, is born, but the coming war takes Matt - and Lorna's dreams - away.

Penelope Lively has always been a keen gardener. This book is partly a memoir of her own life in gardens- the large garden at home in Cairo where she spent most of her childhood, her grandmother's garden in a sloping Somerset field, then two successive Oxfordshire gardens of her own, and the smaller urban garden in the North London home she lives in today. It is also a wise, engaging and far-ranging exploration of gardens in literature, from Paradise Lostto Alice in Wonderland, and of writers and their gardens, from Virginia Woolf to Philip Larkin.

Hugh Paxton was a very important archaeologist and highly influential man. So important that the BBC have decided to make a documentary on his life, focusing on the dig that made him famous. As the film-makers take over the family home, and begin to delve into Hugh's life, there are unexpected upheavals along the way.

Run by Toby and Paula, the centre offers ordinary people a chance to learn from professional artists skilled in poetry, sculpture, ceramics, and the like. Artists like Greg, the New England poet, whose works are strangely absent; or Bob the lascivious potter who sells his Toby jugs to department stores.

A big shabby Victorian suburban house, the smell of raincoats and coq au vin in the hall, the six mugs for the children slung from the kitchen dresser hooks: for destructive Paul, difficult Gina, elegant Sandra, considerate Katie, clever Roger and flighty Clare, Allersmead was the perfect place to grow up

Stella Brentwood, retired anthropologist, has studied social systems around the world, but she finds life in rural Somerset, to which she has retired, as strange and absorbing as any she has met. She re-explores old friendships, but it is her neighbour Karen Hiscox, a fiery and aggressive woman governing her husband and sons with menacing force, who is the most unsettling presence in her new life. SPIDERWEB is an intricate mesh of letters, journal entries, classified adverts and news items which illuminate the narrative of Stella's reassessment of the relationships and journeyings which make up the spiderweb of her life.

"One of Britain's most talented and experienced writers. The closer you look the more mystery you see." --The Times (London) A seductive and hugely suspenseful novel by Booker Prize winning author Penelope Lively, about what can happen when you look too closely into the past Searching through a little-used cupboard at home, Glyn Peters chances upon a photograph he has never seen before. Taken in high summer, many years earlier, it shows his wife, Kath, holding hands with another man. Glyn's work as a historian should have prepared him for unexpected findings and reversals, but he is ill-prepared for this radical shift in perception. His mind fills with questions. Who was the man? Who took the photograph? Where was it taken? When? Had Kath planned for him to find out all along? As Glyn begins to search for answers, he, and those around him, find the certainties of the past and present slip away, and the picture of the beautiful woman they all thought they knew distort. Propelled by the author’s signature mastery of narrative and psychology, The Photograph is Lively at her very best.

'I don't know that you have done anything wrong,' Miss Hepplewhite said. 'But it is possible that you have done something rather dangerous.' William and Susie thought they were just playing a game when they cooked a witch's brew in the old barn and said a spell over it, but Martha was not so sure. And indeed, the three friends soon learn that they have called up something dark and evil out of the distant past . . .

Four illustrated stories for reading ahead or reading alone. 7-9 yrs.

Im sich wandelnden Herzen Londons ist der Architekt Matthew Halland ständig sich der Verschmelzung von Vergangenheit und Gegenwart bewusst. Es weckt Erinnerungen an seine Kindheit, die frühen Jahre seiner Tochter Jane und die gescheiterte Ehe, die er fast hinter sich gelassen hat. Hier ist auch das London der Urgeschichte, der georgianischen Eleganz und des Blitzes. Doch Matthew beschäftigt sich mit dem Bau einer neuen Zukunft für London in den Docklands, und damit beginnt er, neue, fragile, aber hoffnungsvolle Anfänge für sich selbst zu schmieden. Leben verbinden sich und kreuzen sich in einem Netz von Verbindungen, zufällig und geheimnisvoll, in einem der eindringlichsten Romane von Penelope Lively.

Ein Spuk kommt selten allein - bk2048; Boje Verlag; Penelope Lively; Paperback; 1986

Současná britská spisovatelka, nositelka řady prestižních cen, se ve svém románu zamýšlí nad láskou v mnoha jejích podobách. Na konci světa se nazývá jistá usedlost na britském venkově, kde tráví horké letní měsíce Pauline, redaktorka středních let, a její dcera Tereza se svou rodinou. Zatímco Tereza pečuje o malého Luka, její manžel Maurice zde dokončuje práci na své knize. Na první pohled idyla, ale jak se ukáže, jen zdánlivá. Pauline rediguje rukopisy, ale zároveň přemýšlí o rodině své dcery. Srovnává vlastní osud s osudem Terezy, kterou by ráda uchránila před chybami a omyly, kterých se kdysi dopustila ona sama. Z různých náznaků Pauline vycítí blížící se krizi dřív, než kdokoli jiný. Citlivě reaguje na napětí ve vzájemných vztazích, které s postupujícím horkým létem stoupá, až vyvrcholí tragédií.

Claudia Hampton war Kriegsreporterin, sie ist Schriftstellerin und Historikerin. Eine kluge und selbstbewusste Frau, berühmt, in ständiger intellektueller Auseinandersetzung mit ihrer Umgebung und sich selbst. Jetzt, todkrank in einem Krankenhausbett, blickt sie zurück. Persönliche Erinnerungen gehen nahtlos über in politische Ereignisse. Sie erzählt von einer Kindheit kurz nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg, über den Zweiten Weltkrieg und darüber hinaus. Alles in ihrem Leben ist Gegenwart: Kindheit und Krieg, Ägypten und England, die ganze Welt und ihre Vergangenheit. Aber Claudias Geschichte ist auch mit anderen verwoben, und sie muss denen, die sie kannten und liebten, die Möglichkeit geben, zu sprechen. Da ist Gordon, ihr Bruder und Rivale. Jasper, ihr unzuverlässiger Liebhaber und Vater von Lisa, Claudias kühler, konventioneller Tochter. Und dann ist da noch Tom, ihre einzige große Liebe, und jener tragische Zwischenfall in der Wüste. »Was mich interessiert, ist das Gedächtnis, die Art und Weise, wie Menschen und Landschaften aus Erinnerungen zusammengesetzt sind«, schreibt Penelope Lively. Und darum geht es in Nachtglimmen: Die ganze Welt steckt voller Erinnerungen, die Vergangenheit ist allgegenwärtig – man muss nur, wie Claudia Hampton, bereit sein, die Augen zu öffnen.