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Moon Tiger

3.82 of 5 stars 3.82 · rating details · 2,984 ratings · 272 reviews

The elderly Claudia Hampton, a best-selling author of popular history; lies alone in a London hospital bed. Memories of her life still glow in her fading consciousness, but she imagines writing a history of the world. Instead, Moon Tiger is her own history, the life of a strong, independent woman, with its often contentious relations with family and friends. At its center...more

Paperback, 224 pages

Published September 18th 1997 by Grove Press (first published 1987)

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Apr 28, 2012 Elizabeth rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: adventure, england, fiction, mena

This book positively shimmered. I thought about it for days afterward, and not for any specific reason apart from sheer awe at this author's skill. This novel is perhaps the best book I've read all year. Her economy of phrase, wit, and ability to apply a dream-like sheen to a whole compendium of characters makes this book a strange journey, much like an odd dream that you wake up wondering, "was that real?"

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Apr 20, 2011 Mary rated it 5 of 5 stars

Long before The English Patient there was this very taut novel about WWII in north Africa. There isn't a wasted word in the entire novel and while you may not always sympathize with the main character (Claudia), you will enjoy her razor-sharp wit. Her daughter is portrayed as a dull product of a love affair but Lively doesn't allow that to go on either, allowing the daughter to have her say. I've read this countless times because Lively is a master or rather mistress of economy with words and ye...more

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Jun 24, 2012 Esdaile rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: general-post-ww2-society-novel, i-own-it

I do not think I would argue that this is good as a novel, depending on what one understands or expects if anything, from a novel. It is similar in theme to "Bruno's Dream" by Iris Murdoch, the account of a dying woman seen principally through her eyes, her reminiscences, the shifting chronology of her awareness, her memory of isolated images and scenes. The dying woman, who is undoubtedly very like the writer, has grown old with the century and this accounts reads like a brief encomium or swan-...more I do not think I would argue that this is good as a novel, depending on what one understands or expects if anything, from a novel. It is similar in theme to "Bruno's Dream" by Iris Murdoch, the account of a dying woman seen principally through her eyes, her reminiscences, the shifting chronology of her awareness, her memory of isolated images and scenes. The dying woman, who is undoubtedly very like the writer, has grown old with the century and this accounts reads like a brief encomium or swan-song to the twentieth century as experienced directly and indirectly and seen through the eyes of a well educated and somewhat conceited Western lady who went through it. She reminds me very much of my mother, this dying lady, whose life span also coresponded fairly closely to the years of the twentieth century, which many would argue, really began not in 1900, but in 1914. "Bruno's Dream" is entertaining but slight, this work is not slight. It sensitively and sometimes humorously reflects the experience of a class and a time and confronts the mystery of death with compassion and intelligence. Reading this is more like reading a diary than a novel, eavesdropping on recorded reminiscences, than enjoying a crafted work of art, but this piece of writing excels by virtue of its overwhelming authenticity. It reproduces with conviction and intensity, the juxtaposition of memories and the irrelvance of time in the mind's eye and the irrelevance of one life in the eye of God or Providence or who or whatever does or does not shape our destinies. Love, disappointment in marriage and rarely described or even admitted to, disappointment in one's own children too, loss, these are the subjects of this personal account of a lifetime, this autobiogrpahy that is shorter than most and more interesting than most. Although we may hold much against that generation and that century, I do wonder if those who have not succeeded are not with their disdain and staggering ignorance of the past, for all their moral awareness and supercilious self-regard as advanced beings, not very dull stuffed shirts compared to the generation which preceded them. I sense an entire geenration's death recorded in this work, a class and generation, which for all its manifest and manifold faults, was at least not dull and which "drank deep of that heady brew of lived experience". (less)

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Jun 03, 2008 Laura rated it 5 of 5 stars

Wow. Just wow. The nerdiness quotient in how I picked this book up is off the charts (it was quoted in an article I was reading for my thesis) but I can honestly say I have rarely made so wise a geeky decision. To read the summary on the back in a bookstore, I doubt I would have decided to read it. An old woman dying alone in a hospital reflects on her life. Call that a picker-upper. But the way she constructs her life: viewing it as a historian. Weaving the history of the world into her own exi...more

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Oct 07, 2008 Aberlowitz rated it 3 of 5 stars

I read this beautifully written 1987 Booker Prize winner in one gulp. So why only 3 stars? I think it is because the main character, Claudia, embodies everything I wish I was but am not. She is thin and glamorous and has exciting lovers into her sixth decade. She is a successful writer and a successful polemicist who thrives as much on the distaste of those she considers to be unworthy as she does on the approbation of friends. So she tragically loses her one true non-incestuous love during WWII...more

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Feb 17, 2013 Terry rated it 5 of 5 stars

I just finished this book. It was tremendous. I wish I had someone to talk with about it. It's a constant deficiency in my life that I read something that moves me and there is no one around with whom I can discuss it.

I've only recently discovered Penelope Lively. I think I read a review of her book HOW IT ALL BEGAN in ArtForum. It was terrific and I decided I wanted to read the Man Booker winner, MOON TIGER. Even better. The subtly, the humor, the unique voice -- it is no surprise to me this bo...more

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Feb 13, 2013 Marlene Rockmore rated it 4 of 5 stars

I like this book. It was about a talented woman who had a passionate love. They lived in Cairo, in the years between the war, and made love in rooms lit by a hurricane lamp called Moon Tiger. He died in World War II. She is looking back 40 years later. (Another reviewer said this is what English Patient should be..it was more true and haunting.) My book group read another book by Penelope Lively called Consequences, also about loss but Moon Tiger was a better book with wonderful sentences. "Hope...more

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Jan 04, 2013 Cesca rated it 5 of 5 stars

I cried. On public transport. Penelope Lively is that good. I urge you to read this. She's made a fantastic protagonist in Claudia Hampton; fiercely intelligent, beautiful, independent, believable. Claudia, who read History at Oxford like Lively, writes popular historical non-fiction and on her deathbead resolves to write 'a history of the world... And in the process, my own.' It sounds a bit self-aggrandising, but fear not: we are in the hands of a master.

It's beautifully, cleverly done. She lo...more

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Nov 25, 2012 Jon rated it 5 of 5 stars

I recently read How it All Began, a relatively new book by the same author. I gave it a so-so review, but I noted on the cover that she had won the Booker Prize for this earlier one, so I decided to find out if I thought it was better. It was much better. It dealt with many of the same themes--aging and death, the slipshod nature of memory, history, narrative, and the interrelation of history and fiction. Such a description makes it sound boring. And summarizing the plot will have the same effec...more

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Aug 21, 2012 Rita rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: british-novel, novels-set-in-other-countries

Self-centred? Probably. Aren’t we all? Why is it a term of accusation? That is what is was when I was a child. I was considered difficult. Impossible, indeed…. I didn’t think I was impossible at all; it was mother and nurse who were impossible, with their injunctions and their warnings … their terror of all that was inviting about the natural world – high trees and deeper water… the allure of mud and snow and fire….They admonished; I disobeyed. [2]

The teachers all disliked me. “I’m afraid … that...more

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Aug 17, 2012 Beth Bonini rated it 4 of 5 stars

The only really unsatisfying thing about this book is that there isn't more of it.
The protagonist, Claudia, is a fascinating character -- strong-minded, unconventional, independent -- at a time when it was difficult to be all of these things. (I'm not sure that it's much easier now, 21st century or not.) I would have liked to have known Claudia better, to have understood her, but ultimately this book is more a philosophy about time and history and personal mythologising than anything else.

At th...more

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Aug 05, 2012 Diane rated it 4 of 5 stars

The author is an elegant writer. Why then did I keep falling asleep everytime I picked up the book for the first half? the story offered adventure, color and gave us a glimpse of war scene from a perspective of her journalist war correspondency in Egypt. I enjoyed her descriptions of life in Cairo, getting look at the culture both of the British living there and a quick look at the Egyptians during that time frame. The main character is a challenge to understand and for me to relate to. but I fi...more

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Mar 30, 2012 Philip rated it 5 of 5 stars

Time is undoubtedly linear, but our perception of it is not. And for Claudia Hampton, the principal character of Penelope Lively’s novel, Moon Tiger, time, manifest as her life, is a veritable jumble of memories, unfulfilled ambition, probabilities and denied possibilities. She is confused, at least on the outside, and lying infirm in a nursing home bed. But her mind is alive with a life lived, a life she distils to share with us.

Claudia´s confusion, however, is only an external phenomenon. Inte...more Time is undoubtedly linear, but our perception of it is not. And for Claudia Hampton, the principal character of Penelope Lively’s novel, Moon Tiger, time, manifest as her life, is a veritable jumble of memories, unfulfilled ambition, probabilities and denied possibilities. She is confused, at least on the outside, and lying infirm in a nursing home bed. But her mind is alive with a life lived, a life she distils to share with us.

Claudia´s confusion, however, is only an external phenomenon. Internally her memory is sharp, if not ordered. She reminisces on childhood, eager sexual awakening in adolescence, a career as a war correspondent, historian and writer, an affair or two, one very special but doomed, an eventual marriage, maturity, parenthood and old age, but not necessarily in that order. Events are assembled and revisited. Along the way there has been death, birth, a miscarriage, disappointment, fulfilment and ambition, seasoned with shakings of passion, hatred, pride and not a little incest. It has been an interesting life, especially remarkable for the way that Claudia relives it for us.

Claudia’s memories are often intense. There is an attention to detail that renders her character completely three dimensional, four if you include time. She has struggled – and continues to do so – with what seems to be a fundamental lack of love for her daughter, Lisa, and a deep impatience with her grandchildren. Jasper, her partner, was something of a disappointment, but at least a reassuring one, after war had dealt cruelly with what she herself had wanted.

Claudia not only recalls but also relives her passion. She has often been free with her affections, but she has only once given herself completely. Her recollections of the horrors of war are both raw and stark. There is no heroism here: heroic deeds maybe, but only when the protagonists effect them by default.

But in many ways Claudia’s life stopped those years ago in the nineteen forties. What life promised would never be realised and what it had generated died before it truly came to life. Living has thus been a compromise that Claudia herself was only partially willing to make. It is into the gaps left by compromise that occasional views of her from another’s perspective add real spice to the narrative.

Moon Tiger is a complex, challenging read. It is so rewarding, however, that time stands still while you read, but then, at the end, seems to have flashed by in an instant. The instant, of course, was Claudia’s life. Moon Tiger was a brand of mosquito repellent that Claudia and her lover burned during their brief time together in Egypt. What was left was just a little ash.

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Mar 28, 2012 Nancy Jurss rated it 4 of 5 stars

An interesting novel of a dying woman historian who is remembering her past. She says she is writing a "history of the world as selected by Claudia".

This makes her come across as a somewhat unlikeable character initially, but I ultimately found her more sympathetic than she even gives herself credit for. I read this for a book club and will be interested to find out if people think she would have been a different person if certain circumstances in her life had been different.

There is interesti...more

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Mar 12, 2012 Courtney H. rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: bookers

I re-read Moon Tiger after first picking it up years ago, not because it won the Booker but because it happened to be on sale in an Oxfam shop. I didn’t remember much about it, other than not really liking the protagonist very much. I am glad I reread it, because I enjoyed it a great deal more the second time around. I am not sure if it was because I didn’t give it enough attention the first time I read it, or if I simply am in a kind of groove that is favorable toward Lively’s style (certainly...more I re-read Moon Tiger after first picking it up years ago, not because it won the Booker but because it happened to be on sale in an Oxfam shop. I didn’t remember much about it, other than not really liking the protagonist very much. I am glad I reread it, because I enjoyed it a great deal more the second time around. I am not sure if it was because I didn’t give it enough attention the first time I read it, or if I simply am in a kind of groove that is favorable toward Lively’s style (certainly no surprise that it won the Booker – it is of that ilk), but I thought it a challenging story, centered on a protagonist who is, admittedly, somewhat unlikeable, but who also is strong and interesting and unabashedly aware of her own abrasiveness, which puts her more in the company of Kerewin from The Bone People, and firmly outside the camp of the Charles Arrowbys of the Booker world (main protagonist of The Sea, The Sea: not self-aware and totally obnoxious).
Of course, Lively tackled the bigger subject of History (capital H, of course) in the process of also unraveling Claudia’s story (I realize that I use this word “unraveling” often to describe a story’s progression; but then I find that often some of my favorite stories do that – they unravel characters’ backstories and personalities and histories as the novel’s narrative is told). And all this could come off as too pretentious in less deft hands, but Lively manages to do it beautifully and with surprising subtly, given the not-so-subtle start to the story, in which an elderly and dying Claudia announces that she will be writing a story of the history of the world. Instead, history is dealt with more carefully and with as little fanfare from Lively as there is comparatively great fanfare from Claudia, a historian by trade. Lively does not tell us the fickleness of history. Instead, she simply moves between characters, retelling scenes in subtly different ways, giving voice at times to some characters and not to others, shifting relationships and memories based on point-of-view. As I write this, I realize that it could have come off as terribly gimmicky or heavy-handed. Again, largely due to Lively’s care in her narrative and her writing, it does not play at a gimmick at all; to the contrary, it plays naturally, so that the theme of Claudia’s life flows with the theme of the novel, which flows also with the narrative structure itself. They feed into one another gracefully.
I also appreciated, perhaps more this second time around, Lively’s telling of Claudia’s great love story. Claudia’s love stayed with her; it changed but did not define her, and Lively did not try to convince us that the indominable Claudia was shaped solely (or at all) by a love affair. Claudia was Claudia – with all her flaws – before as well as after, and I appreciated the trueness of that. I liked that Lively did not try to convince us that Claudia’s faults were due to being broken by this affair; but nor did she let us forget about the scars it left on Claudia. This demands a fine balance, and Lively carried it off expertly, I thought.
This book more than the others made me glad I decided to reread some of the Bookers I hadn’t read in years. I still love The Remains of the Day and also enjoyed more the second time around the quiet and sophisticated Hotel du Lac (reviews to come), but Moon Tiger really moved up the ranks of Bookers I like the most, and I am glad I gave myself the chance to stop underestimating it.
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Dec 14, 2011 Sarah rated it 4 of 5 stars

Ok, so I'm mildly obsessed by this novel, which won the Booker Prize (now Man Booker) in the 1980s. I just re-read it for about the fifth or sixth time. That's easy to do because Lively writes with incredible compression and it's a fairly short book. Dying in a hospital bed in London, elderly Claudia Hampton is looking back on a life as a writer of popular history books. Announcing to a nurse that she's "writing a history of the world," she proceeds to recounts her own life history (as a war cor...more

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Mar 01, 2011 Greta rated it 3 of 5 stars

Recommended to Greta by: Ruth and her sources

Shelves: fiction

I liked this book but I didn't. I liked the author's use of language because she writes in a readable style that is flowing and evocative. She has a way with words that creates images and conveys ideas that are unique and clear. Occasionally a statement would leap off the page, like: "Wars are fought by children. Conceived by their mad demonic elders and fought by boys." Or: "We all act as hinges - fortuitous links between other people." These ideas made me pause and say, hmmm, yes. I also enjoy...more

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Feb 01, 2011 Kiwiflora rated it 5 of 5 stars

Just look at the cover of this book. Doesn't it make you want to go to Egypt and sink yourself into this picture and all it conjures up? I don't imagine for a minute that Egypt is like this now, but what a wonderful vision to have when reminiscing on your life. 75 year old Claudia Hampton is dying, lying in a hospital bed, drifting in and out of consciousness as the important people in her life, both living and deceased pass through her memory and by her bedside.

And what a life Claudia has live...more Just look at the cover of this book. Doesn't it make you want to go to Egypt and sink yourself into this picture and all it conjures up? I don't imagine for a minute that Egypt is like this now, but what a wonderful vision to have when reminiscing on your life. 75 year old Claudia Hampton is dying, lying in a hospital bed, drifting in and out of consciousness as the important people in her life, both living and deceased pass through her memory and by her bedside.

And what a life Claudia has lived. Born between the wars, she decides that the prescribed life for women of marriage and children is not to be for her. Highly intelligent, beautiful, adventurous, fiercely independent and determined to prove herself she becomes a war correspondent in Cairo. The war, like it did for many many people, became the defining event in her life, the center point from which all her memories radiate out. After the war she continues to defy the conventions of the time by not marrying, having a child and becoming a successful historian. Who says women can't have it all?

So now she is dying. And just like her memories coming and going so the story is told in much the same way. Moving seamlessly from the present to various events and occasions in the past, narrated effortlessly by Claudia and those who make up her life, this is a novel all about a life well lived. It is also about the secrets and deep emotions that we all hold in ourselves and that no one else will ever know about. This is so beautifully and poignantly written with such deep insight that you can see why it won a Booker Prize way back in 1987. I read this book when it was published all those years ago without even really knowing what the Booker Prize was. It obviously made an impression at the time as it is a book that I have always kept. Now having read it again some 20 odd years later, and me being older, it is still a book worth keeping.

And what is a Moon Tiger? It is simply a mosquito coil which as it slowly burn drops ash, in much the same way that Claudia's memories are drip fed through the course of this novel. (less)

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Dec 15, 2010 Mrsgaskell rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 8-star, bookcrossing, british

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Moon Tiger is a brand of mosquito coil that, like life, burns briefly before turning to ash. Claudia Hampton is 76, lying in a hospital bed, dying of cancer and reflecting on her past. A former newspaper correspondent and writer of popular history, she is writing a book: “A history of the world, yes. And in the process, my own. The Life and Times of Claudia H. The bit of the twentieth century to which I’ve been shackled, willy-nilly, like it or not. Let me contemplate myself within my context: e...more

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Mar 19, 2010 Holly marked it as to-read

From the Guardian Booker blog: Moon Tiger is one of the very best Booker winners. Few books I've read recently have given me so much pleasure. (Or pain – this is literature of the first order, after all.)

The novel is so good that I was rather taken aback, especially since it hadn't drifted onto my radar before. Perhaps I'm being solipsistic and the book is actually discussed and praised as often as it ought to be, but I just haven't spotted it. Yet the fact remains that it wasn't in the running...more

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Jun 07, 2009 Stephanie rated it 5 of 5 stars

It took me several false starts to get immersed in the Booker prize-winning Moon Tiger, by Penelope Lively (not the book's fault; I've been quite busy). Once I got in, though, I stayed in, and thoroughly enjoyed the book.

Ms. Lively employs a cute little device that could have been annoyingly twee, had she not handled it so skillfully. Her main character, Claudia, is a popular historian who is gleefully aware that history is, after all, only a story -- and different stories have different degrees...more

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May 10, 2013 Lindsay Heller rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2013, antiquity-nostalgia

This book was pretty incredible in a number of senses. Firstly, it was very well written. Not a single word was wasted, it was almost lyrical. But what was really impressive about this novel was that it was a complete story of a pretty extraordinary life, it managed to make you feel as if you were privy to it all, and it was only two hundred pages long. Now, don't get me wrong, they were two hundred very dense pages, but they were only two hundred pages just the same.

'Moon Tiger' is the story o...more This book was pretty incredible in a number of senses. Firstly, it was very well written. Not a single word was wasted, it was almost lyrical. But what was really impressive about this novel was that it was a complete story of a pretty extraordinary life, it managed to make you feel as if you were privy to it all, and it was only two hundred pages long. Now, don't get me wrong, they were two hundred very dense pages, but they were only two hundred pages just the same.

'Moon Tiger' is the story of the world and the story of a life, or so says Claudia, our heroine, lying in bed dying. From there and through the people who visit her she weaves a story of the past. Her tempestuous ten year on again off again affair with Jasper, the father of her child. Lisa, that same child, cared for primarily by grandparents. Sylvia, her sister in law, married to Gordon, the brother Claudia considered a part of her soul. And memories of Tom Southern, the dashing soldier and love of Claudia's life who died long ago while Claudia was a war corresponded in Egypt. Nothing is in order and nothing in concise.

Tom is clearly the focal point in Claudia's life, the great regret and sorrow she carries with her. He certainly seems to be her one non-incestuous (a phenomenon she equates with narcissism) love interest. However, I'm not entirely sure he rang true to me. He was written well, but there just wasn't enough of him or there wasn't enough passion behind him for me. Perhaps I just found him relatively cliche. I couldn't quite understand why he was so important to a woman who was so fiercely independent and who forged such an interesting story for herself. I can, however, still enjoy his presence as a road-not-taken or rather road interrupted sort of thing. Jasper, on the other hand, was very lively and I loved every line, though I'd never believe them in a grand romance. Out of all the other characters, though, I would have to say it was Gordon I enjoyed the best. Perhaps it makes sense as he is clearly the other side of Claudia's coin. I enjoyed their constant show of bickering back and forth and how clear it was this was the way they communicated and existed together, more as a necessity than actual anger or even annoyance. There are good way and bad way to do things, this whole book was done right. It's not surprise, honestly, that it won the Booker prize. (less)

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Oct 01, 2011 Brenda rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: women-s-fiction, war-fiction, historical-fiction

Need an example of a flawed character? Penelope Lively created one in Claudia Hampton, a historian who is dying of cancer. Laying in her hospital bed, drifting in and out of consciousness, and skipping through her 70 plus years with no regards to chronology, Claudia decides to write a history of the world with herself as the main character. Featured in this history are the main players in Claudia's life: her brother Gordon, daughter Lisa and others, but above all her ex-lover Tom Southern. At th...more

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Jan 29, 2011 Yvann S rated it 5 of 5 stars

Summary: Claudia Hampton, acclaimed author of texts on Cortez and Napoleon and fiercely independent, claims she will write a history of the world in her dying days. As she contemplates the content of her magnum opus, she traces her life (in no way chronologically) through its triumphs and tragedies.

While I struggled with this in the way I expected to (in that it required concentration and a notepad), the writing is truly exquisite. Lively has a brilliant touch with words and I am pleasantly unsu...more Summary: Claudia Hampton, acclaimed author of texts on Cortez and Napoleon and fiercely independent, claims she will write a history of the world in her dying days. As she contemplates the content of her magnum opus, she traces her life (in no way chronologically) through its triumphs and tragedies.

While I struggled with this in the way I expected to (in that it required concentration and a notepad), the writing is truly exquisite. Lively has a brilliant touch with words and I am pleasantly unsurprised that this won the Booker in 1987 (I loathed the 1997 winner, The God of Small Things).

Claudia is a fabulous character. She is feisty, combative, contrary, intelligent and full of feminine wiles. She would sail through life, but that would be too easy. So she takes a lover in Cairo, and again in London. She raises a daughter who is so far removed from her as to be genetically improbable. She is very close to her brother Gordon - their sibling love and rivalry spans war and marriage. His wife seems terrible to all onlookers, yet given the narrative is sensible and sympathetic. Gordon is Claudia's alter ego and thus doesn't need the narrative to express himself. Claudia has terrible relationships with women throughout: flouting her mother's wishes, confused by and ignoring her daughter, apathetic towards her flatmate in Cairo. Reminded me of the fraught mother-daughter-son-in-law issues in the only other Penelope Lively I've read, Heatwave.

Some of Claudia's sparkle, just from the first few pages (I could easily end up quoting the whole book!):

"eclecticism has always been my hallmark"

"a kaleidoscopic view might be an interesting heresy" (when planning a non-chronological history of the world, which is what we are given in her thoughts about her life)

"my seventeenth century is not yours" - I don't quite know what to make of this. Her point is that our perception is coloured by our experiences thus far in life. I'm not sure.

Lively hits on a fascinating idea - the body as a unreliable record of history. Claudia's body records that she has given birth, that she has lost her appendix, yet her losses in love have left no physical scars. She certainly shows a vulnerability to love which is unexpected given her prickliness in the rest of the novel: "It's not you I'm afraid of, it's how I feel." We are treated to beautiful vignettes through her Hungarian foster son (of sorts): the story of how he stole into Kensington Gardens to cut her a bunch of daffodils takes 3 lines and yet stays with the reader.

I was left a little non-plussed by the ending. She receives her sweetheart's diary and quotes it, but the diary isn't as emotional as I had imagined, given his last words. We then return to the nursing home for Claudia's last moments, but they are uneventful and anticlimactic. Hence this beautiful short novel (206 pages) loses one point, but while I don't feel evangelical about it, I would recommend it as a gentle, peaceful read with a magnificent central character.

(from my blog: http://readingfuelledbytea.typepad.co... )(less)

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Aug 20, 2009 Dan rated it 4 of 5 stars

Lively won a Booker prize with this book. It sounds trivial to say the voice, the character, the life and the relationships of an old woman dying in a hospital captivate you, not with her death, but with her life. She grabs you right away in her first person narrative, though, and doesn't let go. Except that she's interrupted by third person narratives on a regular basis, in which some of the same events and relationships are seen from the point of view of others. I admired Lively's ability to c...more

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Jun 14, 2010 Bistra Ivanova rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

Доста ми допадна тази книга, за която не бях чувала и чела почти нищо. Букър 1987. Заради ревюто на Сам Джордисън полюбопитствах и се радвам - http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/books...

Нашата героиня Клодия, вече възрастна жена, лежи в болница и пише "история на света"; е, на света чак едва ли, освен ако не приемем, че светът е това, което на нас ни се е случило. Но така или иначе - тя пътува в спомените си и ни шепне - за детството си, младостта, кариерата на историк и често кореспондент през Вто...more Доста ми допадна тази книга, за която не бях чувала и чела почти нищо. Букър 1987. Заради ревюто на Сам Джордисън полюбопитствах и се радвам - http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/books...

Нашата героиня Клодия, вече възрастна жена, лежи в болница и пише "история на света"; е, на света чак едва ли, освен ако не приемем, че светът е това, което на нас ни се е случило. Но така или иначе - тя пътува в спомените си и ни шепне - за детството си, младостта, кариерата на историк и често кореспондент през Втората война, пътуванията, срещите, любовниците, любовта на живота си, неумението/ нежеланието да бъде добра майка... Клодия ми беше много симпатична - силна, уверена, интелигентна, дръзка жена, до голяма степен егоист, но без това да бъде грозно - за мен тя просто следва сърцето и разбиранията си за това какво трябва да бъде животът.

Като атмосфера и стил на писане книгата е чудесна - омайна и топла; разказът на Клодия пък често се разтяяга и впуска в (уж никому ненужни, но всъщност не) детайли; някои епизоди разказва по два пъти един след друг - веднъж от гледната точна на единия герой, втори път - от тази на другия.

И не че искам да сравнявам, но за ориентир - Лунният тигър ми напомни на Вирджиния Улф, Иън Макюън, военния Хемингуей и Английския пациент. (less)

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Mar 14, 2013 Diana Matias rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

não me entusiasmou... achei o final muito chato, a personagem principal tem a mania que é a única mulher interessante no mundo, as restantes são chatas, meninas dos papás, senhoras pouco cultas... não há uma única personagem feminina de quem ela goste realmente, nem da própria filha. Só se dá com homens e tem relacionamentos um bocado estranhos...

http://rumoencontrado.blogspot.pt/201...

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Oct 08, 2011 Wendy Chard rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Moon Tiger has been one of my greatest discoveries to date. I loved this book immeasurably, and am grateful that it came to me at such a perfect time in my life (from the dusty shelves of an Oxfam bookshop), so that I could not only comprehend it as I did, but also could come away feeling significantly altered by it.

The story is of glorious Claudia Hampton, writer, historian, lover, mother, woman. But the story itself is secondary to its telling. What matters most here, or so it seems, are words...more Moon Tiger has been one of my greatest discoveries to date. I loved this book immeasurably, and am grateful that it came to me at such a perfect time in my life (from the dusty shelves of an Oxfam bookshop), so that I could not only comprehend it as I did, but also could come away feeling significantly altered by it.

The story is of glorious Claudia Hampton, writer, historian, lover, mother, woman. But the story itself is secondary to its telling. What matters most here, or so it seems, are words. This whole book is a love letter to words - a recognition of the way that we can use them to preserve ourselves; to take tiny moments of our lives and pack them in ice, so that they might go on existing after us.

"The power of language." Lively writes, "Preserving the ephemeral; giving form to dreams, permanence to sparks of sunlight." (Pg. 9)

Claudia Hampton's story is a deathbed examination of her life - a rehashing of the moments that came to define her. The people, some long gone, that she can save from mortality through the incredible and enduring power of words.

And words themselves: small fragments of a gargantuan history that we cannot truly comprehend, but that we draw upon every day without thought.

“We open our mouths and out flow words whose ancestries we know not. We are walking lexicons. In a single sentence of idle chatter we preserve Latin, Anglo-Saxon, Norse; we carry a museum inside our heads, each day we commemorate peoples of whom we have never heard. More than that, we speak volumes- our language is the language of everything we have not read. Shakespeare and the Authorised Version surface in supermarkets, on buses, chatter on radio and television. I never cease to wonder at it. That words are more durable than anything, that they blow with the wind, hibernate and reawaken, shelter parasitic on the most unlikely hosts, survive and survive and survive.” (Pg. 41-42)

This book reminded me that our lives are important, and worth writing about. It reminded me that pain has a purpose, and although you need not believe that everything happens for a reason, there is a certain solace in the idea that everything that happens to you plays a part in making you who you are. I'm not so frightened now by changes or by life.

"I'm writing a history of the world," she says. "A history of the world, yes. And in the process, my own." (Pg. 1)(less)

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Mar 12, 2012 Katherine rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

"Moments shower away; the days of our lives vanish utterly, more insubstantial than if they had been invented. Fiction can seem more enduring than reality...And when you and I talk about history we don't mean what actually happened, do we? The cosmic chaos of everywhere, all time? We mean the tidying up of this into books, the concentration of the benign historical eye upon years and places and persons. History unravels; circumstances, following their natural inclination, prefer to remain ravell...more "Moments shower away; the days of our lives vanish utterly, more insubstantial than if they had been invented. Fiction can seem more enduring than reality...And when you and I talk about history we don't mean what actually happened, do we? The cosmic chaos of everywhere, all time? We mean the tidying up of this into books, the concentration of the benign historical eye upon years and places and persons. History unravels; circumstances, following their natural inclination, prefer to remain ravelled" (6).
“By the time we were both at university Mother was well into her retirement from history. She had drawn south Dorset around her like a shawl and blocked out as many aspects of our times as she could” (20-21).
“And that most interesting arrival of all, a creaking top-heavy vessel named from an English hedgerow, crammed with pots and pans, fish-hooks, muskets, butter, meal and pig-headed, idealistic, ambitious, foolhardy people nosing its way into the embracing arm of Cape Cod. Little did you know what you were setting in motion—William Bradford, Edward Winslow, William Brewster, Myles Standish, Steven Hopkins, Elizabeth his wife and all the rest of you. How could you envisage slavery and secession, the Gold Rush, the Alamo, Transcendentalism, Hollywood, the Model T Ford, Sacco and Vanzetti, Joe McCarthy? Vietnam. Ronald Reagan, for heaven’s sake” (29).
“There was a little dog on board the Mayflower. This little dog, once, was chased by wolves not far from the plantation and ran to crouch between its masters legs ‘for succour.’ Smart dog—it knew that muskets are sharper than teeth. What I find remarkable about this animal is that I should know of its existence at all, that its unimportant passage through time should be recorded. It becomes one of those vital inessentials that convince one that history is true” (31).
“And I know, also, nothing. Because I cannot shed my skin and put on yours, cannot strip my mind of its knowledge and its prejudices, cannot look cleanly at the world with the eyes of a child, am as imprisoned by my time as you were by yours” (31).
“We do not remember childhood—we imagine it. We search for it, in vain, through layers of obscuring dust, and recover some bedraggled shreds of what we think it was. And all the inhabitants of this world are among us, like aborigines, like Minoans, people from elsewhere safe in their own time-capsule” (42-43).
“I was talking earlier about language. I have put my faith in language—hence the panic when a simple word eludes me, when I stare at a piece of flowered material in front of a window and do not know what name to give it. Curtain. Thank God. I control the world so long as I can name it. Which is why children must chase language before they do anything else, tame the wilderness by describing it…” (51).
"You need a certain mentality to cope with children. I don't have it. Thank God" (52).
"God shall have a starring role in my history of the world. How could it be otherwise? If He exists, then He is responsible for the whole marvellous appalling narrative. If He does not, then the very proposition that He might has killed more people and exercised more minds than anything else" (56).
“At night she looks at the sizzling stars, which cannot be the same stars that glimmer in English skies, and she feels eternal, which, far from being tranquil, is like some hideous fever…” (90).
“The sky is an immense black dome spiced with brilliant stars…” (92).
“ ‘Not because of the Lord’s intervention or because justice will prevail but because in the last resort we have greater resources. Wars have little to do with justice. Or valour or sacrifice or the other things traditionally associated with them. That’s one thing I hadn’t quite realised” (102).
“And what, you may ask, does that moment in history have to do with me, Claudia, except that I wrote a book about it? Added a few more to the millions of words already written. How does it defy chronology and mesh into my unimportant seventy-six years?
“Like everything else: it enlarges me, it frees me from the prison of my experience; it also resounds within that experience” (158-159).
“As he does so she thinks intensely of this woman who is a whole life for Laszlo but just a voice for her, and of this faceless man, another whole unimaginable life” (176).

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Dec 20, 2012 Elaine rated it 4 of 5 stars

In many ways this is a brilliant book -- Claudia, a historian lying in a hospital bed near the end of her life has the idea of writing a history of the world. Her life as a war correspondent during WWII in Egypt, her intimate knowledge of certain periods of history that she has written about -- like the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs, and the people she has known whose lives intersect the Russian Revolution and the Hungarian revolt, have given her plenty of material and insight. Her internal tho...more

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About Penelope Lively

Penelope Lively CBE (born March 17, 1933) is a prolific, popular and critically acclaimed author of fiction for both children and adults. She has been shortlisted three times for the Booker Prize, winning once for Moon Tiger in 1987.

Born in Cairo in 1933, she spent her early childhood in Egypt, before being sent to boarding school in England at the age of twelve. She read Modern History at St Anne...more

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“Language tethers us to the world; without it we spin like atoms.” — 11 people liked it

“I've grown old with this century; there's not much left of either of us.” — 4 people liked it

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