City of the Mind

by Penelope Lively

Matthew Halland is an architect, intimately involved with the new face of the city, while haunted by earlier times of destruction and loss in its history. Although he is divorced and lonely, Matthew has a rich and moving relationship with his daughter Jane. She offers a fresh perspective on love, loss, and even the city of London.

Matthew becomes entangled with an array of fascinating characters, from Rutter, a corrupt real estate developer whose mafia-like ways disgust him, to Sarah Bridges, a romantic ray of hope who enters his life. Mathew’s relationships with Jane, Sarah, and Rutter allow his mind to rove freely as the past, present, and future interweave and he strives to look ahead and forge new beginnings of his own..

In Lively’s most ambitious novel, she has created a wonderfully rich and audacious confrontation with the mystery of London.

Genres: Fiction, Literary Fiction, British Literature, Novels, Contemporary, Architecture, Historical Fiction

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

Penelope Lively is the author of many prize-winning novels and short-story collections for both adults and children. She has twice been shortlisted for the Booker Prize: once in 1977 for her first novel, The Road to Lichfield, and again in 1984 for According to Mark. She later won the 1987 Booker Prize for her highly acclaimed novel Moon Tiger.

Her other books include Going Back; Judgement Day; Next to Nature, Art; Perfect Happiness; Passing On; City of the Mind; Cleopatra’s Sister; Heat Wave; Beyond the Blue Mountains, a collection of short stories; Oleander, Jacaranda, a memoir of her childhood days in Egypt; Spiderweb; her autobiographical work, A House Unlocked; The Photograph; Making It Up; Consequences; Family Album, which was shortlisted for the 2009 Costa Novel Award, and How It All Began.

She is a popular writer for children and has won both the Carnegie Medal and the Whitbread Award. She was appointed CBE in the 2001 New Year’s Honours List, and DBE in 2012.

Penelope Lively lives in London. She was married to Jack Lively, who died in 1998.

Reviews

[Pam · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is really a wonderful book by Penelope Lively. Previously I’d only read memoirs by her. I’m not suprised by her ability to get this kind of book right. It is not linear and takes some patience. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf does come to mind at times. A very few reviewers do not like it and I can see why it’s not for everyone. One reviewer was bored and one simply thought it wasn’t to his taste. I think those are valid reactions. A third reviewer calls it a “Walmart version of a Virginia Woolf book” and I cannot agree with that at all.

It was an incredibly thoughtful life of London from dim past to more recognizable history all shuffled together as well as the story of a divorced father who is puzzled by the sidestep his life has taken. As Liveley says, Matthew “coasts through the city, his body in one world and his head in many.” Both the city and Matthew are resilient. He is an architect working on a super modern structure in the docklands (built on the mud of the past) as well as a planner for conversions and updates of old buildings in the city. His job allows the author to discuss different ages and conditions in the city as well as demonstrate London’s continual nature. There is much shifting of past, present and suggested future. The city and its people die and are reborn slipping from one time to another with continual recycling of material and ideas.

Some of the most stunning passages deal with the Blitz, bombs, fire and devastation. People occupy those places again. I thought City of the Mind was incredibly ambitious.

[Paul Secor · Rating 5 out of 5]

A friend gave me a copy of City of the Mind some years ago. I'd never read any of Penelope Lively's books before, but after reading this one I was hooked. Since then, I've read nearly all of her books for adults. Probably time to give this one another read.

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a good read. The main character is a London architect, although London is painted as a character in itself. There is an emphasis on the idea that the city is in a state of flux, but that its history is never too far from the surface: that it is a sort of palimpsest – which I loved. Lively illustrates this with scenes from the Blitz intercut with the contemporary action. The two occasionally blur together. Her descriptive writing of London, and her vision of it as a many-layered city, is extremely perceptive and well-executed.

There were parts, however, that didn’t work so well. A lot of the dialogue didn’t ring true for me and I felt as if the story and characterisation weren’t developed enough – perhaps because the descriptive writing was so good by contrast. Saying that, there was something about the book – a warm heart, perhaps, and a sort of intelligent optimism – that made me sure I will read another of her books.

[Jane · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought this was the best of Lively’s novels that I have so far read and I have liked them all. Some of her sentences were just perfection:

« At twenty past three in the morning the moon had tilted right over the roof of the house and was spilling a parallelogram of pure white light upon the carpet. »

I love that there is not a single comma in that sentence. Actually the rest of the paragraph is equally good.

All the main characters are beautifully drawn and the villain of the piece must have been fun to write.

Lively’s exploration of consciousness, of time and place were exquisite while rooted in the most ordinary and recognizable of human experiences. The way those concerns were related to Matthew’s work as an architect was absolutely deft. I kept reading snippets of Matthew’s experience and saying to myself, yes exactly like that.

I thought the book was actually profound.

[Gabby · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book made me cry on several occasions. I loved it.

[Deea · Rating 5 out of 5]

My fourth Penelope Lively. Her books never disappoint.

[Jana · Rating 3 out of 5]

More than 3, but not quite 4.
3-7/8 😉


Penelope’s novels have a repeated theme of time and place, but in this one the theme is on steroids. It almost felt like a philosophical meditation on the subject. She really drives home this idea, most of the time in the context of London.

Matthew, an architect, dwells physically in current (1980s?) London, but as he moves through the city, he imagines the events that happened in the same location through the years. Sometimes we time travel to a scene during the WWII bombings. Or a hungry, sick child. He sees a Huguenot church and recounts that it was once Protestant, then a synagogue, and now a mosque. I wonder what it is in 2020?

It’s definitely a love letter to London and to acknowledging that wherever we are, there is a story in there. What is it?

For me it was reminiscent of the City in the City by China Mieville even though it is also nothing like that wild and wonderful sci-fi-esque novel.

[❀⊱RoryReads⊰❀ · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 Stars

The descriptions of London during World War II are heartbreaking.

[Bruce · Rating 3 out of 5]

Architect Matthew Hallard is distracted. He’s engaged in a large building project, but as he gazes about the site he sees not only the London of his own time in 1990, but buildings that take him back to the 1820s or to the Renaissance. As his mind wanders from his present cares: the break-up of his marriage, his eight-year-old daughter Jane, encounters with an unscrupulous developer, and the good-looking young woman he chanced to encounter in a sandwich shop, his story is interleaved with the stories of other Londoners from other times: an air-raid warden during the blitz, a Victorian natural scientist, Elizabethan explorer Martin Frobisher, and several unnamed children from the past.

Lively ponders the fragile bonds of human affection, estrangement, loss, hope and industry as it swirls through the city and through time. Ultimately it’s a reassuring meditation.

[Peggy Aylsworth · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is by one of my favorite British writers...I've read all her novels. This one is set in the city of London, which she creates almost as a character. The story deals with an London architect, divorced, with a young child, a little girl with whom he has a charming relationship. He wanders the city and brings the reader along with him. Lively's writing is so vivid and probing, in terms of her characters, I always feel I've actually met them...and know more about their interior life than if they were friends.

[sexy bookworm · Rating 1 out of 5]

walmart version of a Virginia Woolf book

[Carolyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I usually try to write my reviews as soon as I've finished a book because the details usually fade all too quickly. I have already forgotten much of the nitty gritty of this book but what has stayed with me is the multi-layered history of London as seen through the mind of architect Matthew. He goes about his daily work life and dwells on the troubles and joys of his personal life. Throughout, he connects to different periods of the past through the buildings he sees or that he knows have vanished. There is no author I know that writes as well as Penelope Lively does about how memory works and how the past lives on through us. This is an early work that I had somehow missed until now. It gave me intellectual pleasure and allowed me to revisit London and its history in an original way.

[Barbara · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a multi-layered book, so much more than a simple narrative. It is about time - historical time, overlapping time, adult time, children's time, refugee time - the city's time - all existing together. It is about the pity of life, and our fragile hold on happiness. The portrait of the brutal property-developer is only too relevant, but it's the other characters, past and present, who remain in our memories. And in one very short passage, we live with the human being wrenched from his native land and held up to ridicule as part of sixteenth-century exploration.

[Judy]

Spiderweb was so enjoyable, that I expected to like this one. Hmm. To me, it was convoluted, and the characters were flat. I liked the idea of the story, but it just didn't catch me. I gave up after 32 pages (I usually give a book at least 50 pages), so I'm not going to rate it. Maybe if I'd read just a little further ...

[Rahul Singh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Last November, I had read 'Family Album' and I immediately fell in love with Penelope Lively's writing. She writes with precision and feeling that tug at the heart and affect you intellectually at the same. It was the same with this one. I hadn't planned on picking this as my second book of hers but I got a second-hand copy and the plot lured me into it. Here, we have Mathew Halland, an architect who's invested in constructing, renovating buildings in London. He is a divorced. He meets his daughter Jane on weekends. And when he's lonely he visits Alice's (his wife's friend) home for physical comfort. In his years at the same job, he's had a lot of time to think about the city, how it's made and for whom. London especially, a melting pot of history where buildings and neighbourhoods represent a whole new aura to what the city had been and what it's like to become. While Halland contemplates these in Lively's majestic stronghold of the city's history, a tycoon comes up offering him a job in getting a site cleared off Bangladeshis and Bengalis who have been living there for ages. Mathew is put into a dilemma- between a moral choice, or self-indulgent ambition. And that he must decide while he bumps into a woman who enraptures him totally. A lot is happening, yes. Isn't life just like that when you're in a city and each day simply brings in a set of drama and developments? It is this and more that Lively is concerned with in this very thought-provoking novel. I was invested in Mathew's story, in the choices he'd make and more so, his observations on city, history, nature and mobility in general. There was something so sharp in the way she captured the rhythms of urban life in less than 250 pages which scholars have been doing for decades and to this day. Not only does it say how broadly and succinctly fiction can capture a topic so complex but also the sense of city or urban is never distanced from individual lives. It is rooted in the everyday choices we make. For Mathew, it's the visit to the museum with his daughter and the dinosaurs he introduces her to, it's the trips on public transport through which he make her see and be one with the city. It is also being interested by English history of colonialism, or the present form of exploitation that people in power continue to exercise. The young, the old, the poor, the rich, the right, the criminal, the insider, the outside; it is these that make a city and it is through them a person like Mathew finds himself despite his loneliness. I heartily recommend this if you're into reading and understanding a city more. If not, you may skip this as Lively's detailed analysis can get overbearing.

[Barbara Backus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Of the many Penelope Lively books that I have read, City of the Mind is the one that had me more in awe of her talent than ever before. In the thoughts of Matthew Halland, a London architect, Lively presents a view and appreciation of the city in new and historical depths.

Halland's work at a firm building skyscrapers, his walks with his young daughter to London landmarks. his views of his role as a husband, and his insights into love and marriage, are viewed against the backdrop of historical events and current events.

And though I am a great admirer of Ms. Lively, I acknowledge that a person who is more intimately familiar with the city's neighborhoods, shopping areas, cultural institutions, and history from its earliest times must gain added pleasure in reading this novel.

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A novel about a man named Matthew, struggling with divorce, who then finds a new love. He also has a young daughter, Jane, who allows him to bounce ideas off her and the reader in an effective way for us to get inside his head.

This is one of those books where the location (London, in this case) is like a main character. London lives and breathes in this book, and the characters take you all over the city.

It's hard to describe this book's tone, but I have a feeling you either like it or don't. I liked it quite a bit. It was ethereal. London lives and breathes through the characters. It's very British, very much a character study, and is about finding ways to move on. It also speaks to the crushing anonymity of living in such a huge city, and finding ways to connect with people regardless.

[Michaela · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was just odd. The plot was too simple and too complicated at the same time. I think having multiple stories told is rather confusing and it did not add any value to the main story. The style of writing is also not something I would enjoy. I appreciate that the author tried to write some parts as if Matthew was thinking but being in someone else´s brain is not easy for the readers. I was also missing depth, especially in the characters as we know so little about them. This was the first book I read from Penelope and I am afraid it was last as well.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this. I wonder, however, would it work for someone who doesn't know London? A lot of the pleasure of this novel is being able to visualize London buildings neighborhoods and traffic. If I was reading this novel set in a city that I didn't know at least as well as I know London I don't think I'd enjoy it as much. It's a decent, realistic, slice of life, novel about a man recovering from a divorce and having a mid-life reflective period. That's the kind of novel that is usually a "meh" for me. What really makes this novel interesting is that it is full of essay-like reflections on the life of a great historic city.

[Horvath Laszlo-Alexandru · Rating 3 out of 5]

Never been to London, so of course the mental image of the book's plot/scenery was an absolute mess, but the idea of the book is a reality that drains us all into a state of constant change. Living in a city that creates you, while you create your own city (of the mind, so to speak, a personal and empiric representation) ain't easy, is it? :D

[Mark Dudley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely brilliant. I love Penelope Lively's writing and this is one of her best.

[Isla McKetta · Rating 5 out of 5]

A strange and floating book that felt just right for right now. Some of her sentences are so incisive and yet I loved the feeling of dreaming myself through large parts of the book.

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Three stars is generous...I really found this to be quite a slog. I think this book needs to be consumed in one or two sittings so you can just flow with the narrative and the occasional jumps in time to the past events of a place. I wound up reading this in tiny dribs and drabs and every time I picked it up I had to really think about where we were and why I was supposed to care.

[Colin · Rating 4 out of 5]

City of the Mind is classic Penelope Lively: thoroughly readable and engaging, thought-provoking and stimulating. First published in 1991, it is concerned with the changing face of London, but is more than an urban melodrama; in typical Lively fashion, this is a novel about the impact of the past on the present. Matthew Halland is an architect involved (in a not wholly committed way) with a major Docklands development and with the restoration of some of the city's more historical residences, sees the history of London impinging on the contemporary city through which he moves, as he sees his own past influencing his current self. Scenes from London's past bubble to the surface of the novel - the Blitz is vividly realised - and there is a strong sense of people caught in a relentless river of time. City of the Mind also contains some of the most beautiful writing about human relationships and the experience of love I've read in a long while.

[Jgknobler · Rating 3 out of 5]

A divorced London architect is working on the renovation of an old industrial building. He meets a girl; has outings with his young daughter; is approached by an unsavory businessman who wants to collaborate on development (and throw out inconvenient tenants.) There are also confusing passages about an air raid warden during the blitz. While there are some lovely parts of this novel, and we definitely care about the protagonist, it is difficult to see what Lively is getting at--I suppose the past influencing the present, or the present built on the ruins of the past.

[Moira · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wondrous and discursive, a whisper of a plot wrapped around the intimate flaneurial voice of a mid-40s London architect. I can forgive it being a bit too neatly drawn together at the end, the consolations of getting to know this man and his very particular view of London are too great. Put me in mind of Teju Cole's Open City, though without that book's horrifying dark heart.

Also: Penelope Lively! Where have she been all my life? Already adding her to my very personal canon, the one I secretly call Wry British Woman Explain the World to Moira Over Tea.

[Lauren Albert · Rating 4 out of 5]

A complex novel about loss and life after loss. With London as the backdrop, we see the continuity of human life. I hadn't been conscious of the complexity of the pattern that Lively had woven until I looked back after finishing it. From dinosaur eggs to a contemporary builder moving an old graveyard, Lively creates a London ever young and ever ancient--full of death and birth.

[Kathie Wilkinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely loved this book. The way Lively uses the narrator, architect Matthew Halland, as a viewer of the city, is amazing. Lively through Halland's eyes shows the passage of time and its effect on the city, its buildings, and the narrator, and those closest to him. A most unique book, unlike any of her other novels, but in my opinion one of the best.

[Annette · Rating 4 out of 5]

From the first sentence you know you are in the hands of a novelist who 100% knows what they're doing.

As I think I've said before, a lot of novelists owe Penelope Lively quite a bit. This time I suspect, Kate Atkinson and Sarah Waters, for Lively's extraordinary descriptions of the London blitz.

[Ro Nowak · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's one of those books that make you feel that if you've read one piece of English literary fiction you really have read them all & it just keeps being the same characters, thoughts, and ideas rehashed & rescrambled. Maybe I'm just oversaturated. Probably would have liked it more if I'd never read an English book before, but here I am.