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The Road to Lichfield
The Road to Lichfield is the Booker Prize shortlisted first novel by Penelope Lively, published as a Penguin Essential for the first time on the 40th anniversary of its publication.
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. Deeply felt, beautifully controlled, The Road to Lichfield is a subtle exploration of memory and identity, of chance and consequence, of the intricate weave of generations across a past never fully known, and a future never fully anticipated.
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. Deeply felt, beautifully controlled, The Road to Lichfield is a subtle exploration of memory and identity, of chance and consequence, of the intricate weave of generations across a past never fully known, and a future never fully anticipated.
216 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1977
142 people are currently reading
1323 people want to read
About the author
Penelope Lively
132 books950 followersPenelope 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 170 reviews
November 3, 2017
I discovered Penelope Lively about a month ago, with her Booker-Prize winning Moon Tiger. I devoured it not once, but twice in a one month period, and I can't wait to consume it again. It is a novel which will stay with me until death or dementia.
I did not enjoy The Road to Lichfield quite as well. The writing is still exceptional, and it's better than most of what's out there. Ms. Lively does not waste a reader's time--she always offers you the meat, not the fat, and, when you hit the bone marrow, your teeth chatter, you start to shudder, and sometimes you can't quite stop.
Lively wrote this story in her mid-forties, back in 1977, and it is incredibly, remarkably modern. Nothing about it feels dated, except when she mentions the prices of things--the new, lavish home for thirty-five thousand? Okay, maybe a few things have changed.
However, what hasn't changed is mid-life. Mid-life. It will always be the same, despite the century. A time of change, frustration, sick and dying parents, career boredom, marital angst, and teenaged children who find you out-of-date. And all of this written in a very disturbing, very accurate and upsetting way.
It's hard to recommend a book which may provoke you to have an extramarital affair, quit your career, or leave your family for Paris. This novel carries the transportative power of Kate Chopin's The Awakening. As in, one more page and you've abandoned your children, you're naked, and you're headed out to sea.
This is a dangerous and often depressing novel. Consider yourself warned.
I did not enjoy The Road to Lichfield quite as well. The writing is still exceptional, and it's better than most of what's out there. Ms. Lively does not waste a reader's time--she always offers you the meat, not the fat, and, when you hit the bone marrow, your teeth chatter, you start to shudder, and sometimes you can't quite stop.
Lively wrote this story in her mid-forties, back in 1977, and it is incredibly, remarkably modern. Nothing about it feels dated, except when she mentions the prices of things--the new, lavish home for thirty-five thousand? Okay, maybe a few things have changed.
However, what hasn't changed is mid-life. Mid-life. It will always be the same, despite the century. A time of change, frustration, sick and dying parents, career boredom, marital angst, and teenaged children who find you out-of-date. And all of this written in a very disturbing, very accurate and upsetting way.
It's hard to recommend a book which may provoke you to have an extramarital affair, quit your career, or leave your family for Paris. This novel carries the transportative power of Kate Chopin's The Awakening. As in, one more page and you've abandoned your children, you're naked, and you're headed out to sea.
This is a dangerous and often depressing novel. Consider yourself warned.
November 8, 2017
I’ve lavished praise on Penelope Lively in the past but I can’t think of anything positive to say about this. Anne is married to Don, an unimaginative man who likes to get his money’s worth. It’s a thoroughly bland marriage. I was more interested in this marriage than in anything else in this book but Lively skips over it as if it’s somehow normal for two people who barely have anything in common to live with each other for years on end. Maybe it’s an indication of how much things have changed that Lively seems to regard this kind of marriage as a normal state of affairs without need of commentary. When Anne’s father is diagnosed with dementia she discovers he has been giving money to a mysterious female every month. Turns out she is the daughter of a dead woman her father had a long standing affair with. Meanwhile Anne herself begins an affair with a neighbour of her father. There’s plenty of potential in such a ground plan. However, this is a novel that stumbles along without a purpose, like getting into a car without any destination in mind. Every relationship in this novel is almost unbelievably bland. The affair must be the blandest account of adultery I’ve ever read. And the focus is all over the place. For some reason we get an extensive account of Anne’s brother’s life – a bachelor who favours young girls over women. Eventually we will discover his life is no less bland than Anne’s. The upshot of the mysterious woman is bland as well. A supposedly pivotal moment in the novel is when Anne joins a committee to save from demolition the oldest building in her village. But Lively makes this building wholly unattractive so we have little concern for its survival. Finally she gives it some skeletons in the closet as if to further ram home the point that everything we idealise is a sham. This is a novel that seems to posit middle class mediocrity as the best we can hope for. Yuk is all I can say.
April 2, 2020
I really like Penelope Lively. I've read several of her books, and there's always good plotting and characterizations. I care about her people because they are "normal" by which I guess I mean a lot like me. She puts them in situations that are recognizable and lets them figure it out for themselves. They almost always do the right thing, which can be different for everyone. I needed a down-to-earth, sensible novel, and this was on my shelf so I plucked it out.
What I didn't realize was that this was her first novel. It was every bit as accomplished and well-written as her later ones, without the awkward phrasing and logistical problems you see in some first novels. Written in 1977, it is still relevant and undated, as we are still dealing with aging, dying parents, sarcastic, moody teen-agers, and marriages that have gone stale. Some things never change.
3.5 stars, rounded up to 4 because it's Penelope Lively.
What I didn't realize was that this was her first novel. It was every bit as accomplished and well-written as her later ones, without the awkward phrasing and logistical problems you see in some first novels. Written in 1977, it is still relevant and undated, as we are still dealing with aging, dying parents, sarcastic, moody teen-agers, and marriages that have gone stale. Some things never change.
3.5 stars, rounded up to 4 because it's Penelope Lively.
November 2, 2018
This was Penelope Lively's first novel for adults, and it was shortlisted for the 1977 Booker Prize, which was won that year by Paul Scott's Staying On. As always Lively's writing is intelligent and perceptive, even if the plot is rather slight.
The story is told me an omniscient narrator, but occasionally slips into the first person. At its centre is Annie, who travels from her home in Berkshire to the home in Dr Johnson's home town of Lichfield to visit her dying father. Annie is married to the dull but reliable Don, and has a more flamboyant elder brother Graham who works as a television producer and has never married. At her father's bedside she meets David, a teacher who was her father's fishing companion, and an affair ensues. Parallel to this narrative, Annie discovers that her father has been giving money regularly to the daughter of a former mistress she knew nothing about. Annie is a historian, and another plot concerns the fate of an old but dilapidated farmhouse in her Berkshire village and the failed campaign to save it from developers.
A quiet book and as always with Lively a pleasure to read, but perhaps not her best work. It is full of little details that remind the reader how much England has changed in the last 40 years.
The story is told me an omniscient narrator, but occasionally slips into the first person. At its centre is Annie, who travels from her home in Berkshire to the home in Dr Johnson's home town of Lichfield to visit her dying father. Annie is married to the dull but reliable Don, and has a more flamboyant elder brother Graham who works as a television producer and has never married. At her father's bedside she meets David, a teacher who was her father's fishing companion, and an affair ensues. Parallel to this narrative, Annie discovers that her father has been giving money regularly to the daughter of a former mistress she knew nothing about. Annie is a historian, and another plot concerns the fate of an old but dilapidated farmhouse in her Berkshire village and the failed campaign to save it from developers.
A quiet book and as always with Lively a pleasure to read, but perhaps not her best work. It is full of little details that remind the reader how much England has changed in the last 40 years.
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July 9, 2017Like a fine wine: subtle and nuanced. Pure pleasure with a long finish.
I had read that this was Dame Penelope's first novel, which continued to astound as I read in view of the tight control of pace and voice. But it turns out this was her first novel for adults. Aha.
First published in 1977: refreshing to remember a world and time where people were not constantly tweeting and messaging and what's-apping and nothing ever beeped at you. But the underlying themes of our relationship with the past and repeating the patterns of behaviour set by our parents is one that is as relevant today as forty years back.
I had read that this was Dame Penelope's first novel, which continued to astound as I read in view of the tight control of pace and voice. But it turns out this was her first novel for adults. Aha.
First published in 1977: refreshing to remember a world and time where people were not constantly tweeting and messaging and what's-apping and nothing ever beeped at you. But the underlying themes of our relationship with the past and repeating the patterns of behaviour set by our parents is one that is as relevant today as forty years back.
June 22, 2021
“But when you are eighteen – or twenty-three – it is inconceivable that the choices you make must be worn like albatrosses around your neck for the rest of your life. And when you are forty-two it seems the ultimate malevolence that one should have been faced with those choices at the point in life when most of us are least equipped to make them.”
Protagonist Anne Linton lives in Cuxing with her husband and two children. She travels regularly to Lichfield, where her widowed father is in a nursing home. During these trips, Anne learns one of her father’s secrets, which changes her perception of her past, and finds an unexpected relationship, which changes her perception of her present (specifically, her marriage). She loses her job as a history teacher and becomes involved in a local effort to save a historically significant cottage.
It is hard to describe the impact of this book in a few sentences. It is slow in developing, and I was not sure where it was headed, but once I finished, I felt like I “got it.” This book examines a person’s history, of the passage of time, and memories, and how these elements impact one’s perceptions of life. The tone is quiet and contemplative. The characters are well developed and easy to picture.
If you enjoy “slice of life” books, you will find much to appreciate in this one. Lively’s writing style is delightful. I had previously read How It All Began, which I very much enjoyed, and plan to read more of her works.
“Oh, the past is disagreeable all right, she thought, no wonder we'd rather not know. And it has this way of jumping out at you from behind corners when you're least expecting it, so that you have to spend time and energy readjusting to it, redigesting it. Or it hangs around your neck like an albatross, so that there is no putting it aside ever, even if you wanted to.”
Protagonist Anne Linton lives in Cuxing with her husband and two children. She travels regularly to Lichfield, where her widowed father is in a nursing home. During these trips, Anne learns one of her father’s secrets, which changes her perception of her past, and finds an unexpected relationship, which changes her perception of her present (specifically, her marriage). She loses her job as a history teacher and becomes involved in a local effort to save a historically significant cottage.
It is hard to describe the impact of this book in a few sentences. It is slow in developing, and I was not sure where it was headed, but once I finished, I felt like I “got it.” This book examines a person’s history, of the passage of time, and memories, and how these elements impact one’s perceptions of life. The tone is quiet and contemplative. The characters are well developed and easy to picture.
If you enjoy “slice of life” books, you will find much to appreciate in this one. Lively’s writing style is delightful. I had previously read How It All Began, which I very much enjoyed, and plan to read more of her works.
“Oh, the past is disagreeable all right, she thought, no wonder we'd rather not know. And it has this way of jumping out at you from behind corners when you're least expecting it, so that you have to spend time and energy readjusting to it, redigesting it. Or it hangs around your neck like an albatross, so that there is no putting it aside ever, even if you wanted to.”
August 8, 2017
I've read a number of Penelope Lively's novels - including her best-known children's novels The Ghost of Thomas Kempe and The House at Norham Gardens - and there is a consistency in her themes, no matter what setting or time period she chooses. She is interested in time, in the past, in the concept of history: how it impacts us, how we perceive it, how it shapes us and how we shape it. I was reading a bit about her background, and it wasn't surprising to learn that she read History at Oxford.
The Road to Lichfield was Lively's first adult novel, after a successful career writing children's novels, and on the surface at least it seems to follow the outline of her own life. Perhaps she was following the advice to 'write what you know'; at any rate, the novel rings true both emotionally and in the details. The protagonist Anne Linton is 40, a history teacher, the mother of a son and daughter; she was born in the 1930s, was a child during World War II, and is entering middle age during the 1970s - a time of great change for women. I wouldn't describe this as a 'liberation' story, though; quite the opposite. When the story begins, Anne's father has recently been put into a nursing home. Over the course of the novel, which takes place between April and late August, Anne begins making regular visits from her home in Berkshire to her father's home in Lichfield. (The fact that Samuel Johnson was also from Lichfield is mentioned several times in the plot.) As she comes to terms with her father's oncoming death, Anne must also come to terms with new information which puts her father's past (and in some sense, his whole character) into a different light. Meanwhile, she begins an affair with one of her father's neighbours - a schoolmaster of a similar age to her own. The idea of history, and its relevance, plays out in a number of ways in the plot.
Lively's domestic adult fiction is very middle-class English, and this is both an appealing and off-putting quality. Her dialogue is extremely naturalistic and realistic; and silences, a well-chosen word, or banal commonplace can be perfectly revealing. She writes in the third-person, but with glimpses into the workings of a mind: not just Anne's, but also her father's and occasionally that of David, her lover. Her novels are like a smooth, controlled surface, with ripples of emotion occasionally bubbling up. I'm interested in her work because she is fascinated by the sorts of ideas that fascinate me, too. Anne and her husband Don have a very different way of thinking about things, and they place value on experiences and emotions in sometimes starkly different ways. Is this more normal than not for men and women, or is it just that it reflects back to me so much of my own experience? Either way, this novel struck a personal chord with me. The ending, so controlled and understated, was nevertheless quite devastating.
Thank you to Elke @meetpenguingirl and Penguin Platform for sending me this edition of the Penguin Essentials.
The Road to Lichfield was Lively's first adult novel, after a successful career writing children's novels, and on the surface at least it seems to follow the outline of her own life. Perhaps she was following the advice to 'write what you know'; at any rate, the novel rings true both emotionally and in the details. The protagonist Anne Linton is 40, a history teacher, the mother of a son and daughter; she was born in the 1930s, was a child during World War II, and is entering middle age during the 1970s - a time of great change for women. I wouldn't describe this as a 'liberation' story, though; quite the opposite. When the story begins, Anne's father has recently been put into a nursing home. Over the course of the novel, which takes place between April and late August, Anne begins making regular visits from her home in Berkshire to her father's home in Lichfield. (The fact that Samuel Johnson was also from Lichfield is mentioned several times in the plot.) As she comes to terms with her father's oncoming death, Anne must also come to terms with new information which puts her father's past (and in some sense, his whole character) into a different light. Meanwhile, she begins an affair with one of her father's neighbours - a schoolmaster of a similar age to her own. The idea of history, and its relevance, plays out in a number of ways in the plot.
Lively's domestic adult fiction is very middle-class English, and this is both an appealing and off-putting quality. Her dialogue is extremely naturalistic and realistic; and silences, a well-chosen word, or banal commonplace can be perfectly revealing. She writes in the third-person, but with glimpses into the workings of a mind: not just Anne's, but also her father's and occasionally that of David, her lover. Her novels are like a smooth, controlled surface, with ripples of emotion occasionally bubbling up. I'm interested in her work because she is fascinated by the sorts of ideas that fascinate me, too. Anne and her husband Don have a very different way of thinking about things, and they place value on experiences and emotions in sometimes starkly different ways. Is this more normal than not for men and women, or is it just that it reflects back to me so much of my own experience? Either way, this novel struck a personal chord with me. The ending, so controlled and understated, was nevertheless quite devastating.
Thank you to Elke @meetpenguingirl and Penguin Platform for sending me this edition of the Penguin Essentials.
August 16, 2018
I really enjoyed this. The writing style was great, the theme of history and the past very interesting, and its exploration of family and marriage very well done.
August 13, 2014
I've become an avid Penelope Lively fan and I dived into this one. It was like diving into cool translucent water on a hot day, so lucid the prose, so calm and unhurried the plot, so careful the nudges towards a theme. This is known territory: middle-class, middle-life, middle-England. Sounds tedious and parochial? What saves it is Lively's understanding of what I'm going to be daring (#pretentious) and call the 'psychic infrastructure' of her chosen subject.
This could never be called a Big Novel, but its virtue is in its small scale. Anne Linton, a history teacher, drives to Lichfield to visit her dying father over the course of a year, gets involved in a conservation project, falls in love and reflects on personal and textbook history. There are moments of humour, sadness and insight. The situation at the end of the novel is very subtly different from the situation at the beginning. It is Lively's gift that she can take you on this quiet journey with absolute assurance, wit and compassion.
This could never be called a Big Novel, but its virtue is in its small scale. Anne Linton, a history teacher, drives to Lichfield to visit her dying father over the course of a year, gets involved in a conservation project, falls in love and reflects on personal and textbook history. There are moments of humour, sadness and insight. The situation at the end of the novel is very subtly different from the situation at the beginning. It is Lively's gift that she can take you on this quiet journey with absolute assurance, wit and compassion.
July 14, 2014
I've been on a recent Penelope Lively binge. She's my version of Maeve Binchy. Better writer, easy to get caught up in her stories. I like her female protagonists who are always prickly, never goody two shoes and usually acerbic in their judgments of the people around them. MOON TIGER will always be my favorite of hers, but the others are engaging. This one a little less so.
June 26, 2024
subtelna, piękna, wspaniała. znalazła mnie przypadkiem, a zostanie na długo. genialne portrety psychologiczne zwykłych ludzi (i ich słabości), mnóstwo urbanistyki i rozmyślań. to książka po prostu napisana dla mnie.
September 18, 2024
Dzięki booktourowi Oli @cosmicreads poznałam kolejną bardzo dobrą książkę, po którą prawdopodobnie sama z siebie nigdy bym nie sięgnęła. Bardzo prosta historia czyjegoś życia, wzlotów, upadków i osobistych dramatów a tak absorbująca, bogata w różnorodne przedstawianie treści, niepozostawiająca uczucia wybrakowania, niedosytu.
August 15, 2012
A typically English novel but while I was reading it I felt reminded of many situations in my own life. The lack of emotion/passion is remarkable and captures (intentionally? I am not sure) how foreigners, especially the French, are traditionally portrayed as imagining the English. The novel is easy to read and the characters highly believable. The main character falls in love with apparently as much emotion as she invests in any reflection about work or anything else. Relentlessly English, this novel is nevertheless enjoyable and extremely discrete and delicately written, nothing to offend anyone and altogether a "cosy read". There is a mild attempt to present different characters from the different perspectives of other characters but it is not taken very far. There is also a very mildly patriotic undertone to this book.
I gave this book four stars because it is so easy and enjoyable to read, certainly not for any revelation or philosophical profundity. It has the great virtue of being honest because it reads as little more than a biographical reproduction of the writer's own feelings and reactions to events in her own life. This tale does not seem to be inventive or fanciful in any way.
I gave this book four stars because it is so easy and enjoyable to read, certainly not for any revelation or philosophical profundity. It has the great virtue of being honest because it reads as little more than a biographical reproduction of the writer's own feelings and reactions to events in her own life. This tale does not seem to be inventive or fanciful in any way.
February 17, 2018
I've known Penelope Lively's name for years but somehow never read any of her books. I'd just ordered her latest work (a garden memoir) when I discovered this little novel at Half Price Books. I decided to take a chance since it was only $3.00. Not much of a chance really as I stood in the store reading the first page and was immediately entranced with Lively's language. A beautifully written book about the last days of an aging parent. Driving to visit her father at the nursing home and then taking care of his house, sets a whole series of events/memories/histories in motion for his daughter, her family and sibling. Just a lovely read. Lots of side story about historic preservation in an English village with crazy characters and thoughtful discussion about what is worth preserving and why. Highly recommended.
November 21, 2016
I'm dragging out reading the rest of Penelope Lively's back catalogue as they are all near classics and there isn't that long until the day that it will run out on me.
October 11, 2025
In between reading a batch of fascinating contemporary novels I am on a bit of a quest to read the 1970s Booker shortlists, those I haven’t already finished. It is such a time warp: I was a teenager in those years and began as a medical student towards the end of the decade; the 70s were only a bare 15 years from the ending of WW2 and the consequent economic hardships and European devastation were a real part of life; my own mother was only in her 40s, younger than me now, the same age as Ann, who is at the centre of this book.
The title of the book refers to the journey that Ann makes repeatedly from her own Home Counties house in smugly thriving Berkshire with her boring but reliable solicitor husband and predictable two teenage children to visit her dying father in Lichfield where he has sensibly decamped to a nursing home as his faculties have left him. There are many hilarious anecdotes of Ann’s boringly safe life as a woman of this time: part time job teaching history in a comprehensive school until she is made redundant as the go-ahead trendy leftie new headteacher decides that history is meaningless to teenagers, social studies are to replace it; the village campaign to save an ugly shambolic but possibly medieval cottage from demolition and the site ‘developed’ into housing; her brief dalliance with a younger friend of her fathers, who is also trapped in an unfulfilled marriage. As has been referred to by many other reviewers this is a very controlled narrative beautifully written and made me consider the impact of the past on the present, especially as I face the inevitable ageing and loss of elderly relatives.
Overall a skilfully written but quiet book firmly based the not so distant past of the 1970s.
The title of the book refers to the journey that Ann makes repeatedly from her own Home Counties house in smugly thriving Berkshire with her boring but reliable solicitor husband and predictable two teenage children to visit her dying father in Lichfield where he has sensibly decamped to a nursing home as his faculties have left him. There are many hilarious anecdotes of Ann’s boringly safe life as a woman of this time: part time job teaching history in a comprehensive school until she is made redundant as the go-ahead trendy leftie new headteacher decides that history is meaningless to teenagers, social studies are to replace it; the village campaign to save an ugly shambolic but possibly medieval cottage from demolition and the site ‘developed’ into housing; her brief dalliance with a younger friend of her fathers, who is also trapped in an unfulfilled marriage. As has been referred to by many other reviewers this is a very controlled narrative beautifully written and made me consider the impact of the past on the present, especially as I face the inevitable ageing and loss of elderly relatives.
Overall a skilfully written but quiet book firmly based the not so distant past of the 1970s.
January 25, 2026
I have never before, Anne thought, realized that cooling towers are beautiful. Or that the front gardens of houses are infinite in their variety. Or that clouds piled on the skyline take on the shape of castles and cathedrals. If fields are always that colour in late April, then it seems to have escaped me hitherto. And never have I sat in a traffic jam, sandwiched between two shuddering lorries, and hummed or tried to all I can remember of The Marriage of Figaro. I have never particularly enjoyed driving. I have certainly never realized that roads one has known for years could be sanctified in the course of three weeks.
There she saw were the cooling towers and there the traffic light in Banbury where once one hummed The Marriage of Figaro between lorries, and there the spot where poppies had blazed, suddenly, in the middle of June.
These are two passages that capture two moments in Anne's life, two moments on the road to Lichfield.
When you pick up a Penelope Lively book, you're sure to find a story that will keep you company, engage you, and that is told in the words we so often long to find but can't.
There she saw were the cooling towers and there the traffic light in Banbury where once one hummed The Marriage of Figaro between lorries, and there the spot where poppies had blazed, suddenly, in the middle of June.
These are two passages that capture two moments in Anne's life, two moments on the road to Lichfield.
When you pick up a Penelope Lively book, you're sure to find a story that will keep you company, engage you, and that is told in the words we so often long to find but can't.
August 6, 2018
I loved this quiet, thoughtful book, which I read at just the right moment. Anne, in her early 40s, spends a summer driving back and forth to visit her father in a nursing home and begin sorting out his house. She has a brief affair with one of his neighbors, and learns a secret about his past. Back home, she is drawn into a campaign to save an old cottage from developers, but she has mixed feelings. How should we relate to the past? What is worth saving? How much does it shape us, and what if the past isn’t what we thought? (Anne, fittingly, is a history teacher).
There are lots of funny moments here: the cottage campaigners are all newcomers to the village. They invite one elderly resident but complain she isn’t “up to date,” though she has lived the history they are preserving on their walls in the form of highly polished old farm implements. Meanwhile the developer knows much more about the cottage’s history, because he is a local man and his own grandparents once lived there.
Anne’s relationships with her husband, brother, lover and children are never played for melodrama, but lead her to reflect on her past.
I read this in my own parents’ new house, full of old family things, where I keep discovering familiar furniture and object and remembering where they were in the old house, and in my grandparents’ houses before that. So the novel’s themes of the past and how it can be inscribed in places, and how it isn’t as permanent or unchanging as we might imagine really spoke to me.
I guess this isn’t 5 stars for me because sometimes it seemed a bit obvious and maybe too unstructured? But I liked the way it travelled with Anne on the road to Lichfield and in the byways of memory so the occasional aimlessness was not really a fault.
There are lots of funny moments here: the cottage campaigners are all newcomers to the village. They invite one elderly resident but complain she isn’t “up to date,” though she has lived the history they are preserving on their walls in the form of highly polished old farm implements. Meanwhile the developer knows much more about the cottage’s history, because he is a local man and his own grandparents once lived there.
Anne’s relationships with her husband, brother, lover and children are never played for melodrama, but lead her to reflect on her past.
I read this in my own parents’ new house, full of old family things, where I keep discovering familiar furniture and object and remembering where they were in the old house, and in my grandparents’ houses before that. So the novel’s themes of the past and how it can be inscribed in places, and how it isn’t as permanent or unchanging as we might imagine really spoke to me.
I guess this isn’t 5 stars for me because sometimes it seemed a bit obvious and maybe too unstructured? But I liked the way it travelled with Anne on the road to Lichfield and in the byways of memory so the occasional aimlessness was not really a fault.
April 8, 2013
Well-written but I couldn't get into taking the central conflict of the affair all that seriously. The protagonist floats through her life sort of like an Anita Brookner character, which I think is realistic, but not all that compelling in this novel.
September 20, 2022
I am a sucker for Penelope Lively, every time. It is a genre all of her own, for sure: disaffected middle-aged British woman, muddling through life in a stiff-upper-lip kind of way, and then SOMETHING HAPPENS, probably a RELATIONSHIP. And then it all fades to gray again. This one grabbed me less than some of her others—I found the plot boring, and then main character fairly tedious in her cold unsentimentality—but I love Lively’s sophisticated, clean prose so much that I will always happily finish one of her novels.
September 29, 2023
4.5 stars- just wonderful. Penelope’s extraordinary prose makes everyday events glow with reality and importance. As usual her lead character, Annie, is someone you wish you knew. I guess a couple of things Annie does are odd and don’t quite ring true with the rest of her character- one is her choice of husband. The other will be clear to you upon finishing.
February 14, 2016
I always enjoy Penelope Lively stories and when I can't think of anything else to read she is reliable choice. This story of a middle-aged woman who gets word that her widowed father has checked himself into a nursing home due to Parkinson's related dementia seemed a perfect book for me.
The protagonist, Ann Linton, is married to a lawyer, has two teenagers, teaches at a private school and gets roped into civil improvement projects by a friend. There is nothing wrong with her life, but it has gone a bit stale. While going through her father's things she discovers that he has been sending not a small amount of money every month to a woman she has never heard of, then she comes across a photo of woman who is not Ann's mother. She also meets a fishing friend of her fathers, a man her age who has a marriage lacking in passion as well.
This is a quiet story of a women who realizes that you can never really know someone and that other's don't really know her.
It's intelligently written and made me think about how we know our loved ones in certain roles and in the way they relate to us and don't often know, especially with our parents, all that they think and feel, dream of and regret. Which is probably for the good!
I can't say that I highly recommend it, but I enjoyed it.
The protagonist, Ann Linton, is married to a lawyer, has two teenagers, teaches at a private school and gets roped into civil improvement projects by a friend. There is nothing wrong with her life, but it has gone a bit stale. While going through her father's things she discovers that he has been sending not a small amount of money every month to a woman she has never heard of, then she comes across a photo of woman who is not Ann's mother. She also meets a fishing friend of her fathers, a man her age who has a marriage lacking in passion as well.
This is a quiet story of a women who realizes that you can never really know someone and that other's don't really know her.
It's intelligently written and made me think about how we know our loved ones in certain roles and in the way they relate to us and don't often know, especially with our parents, all that they think and feel, dream of and regret. Which is probably for the good!
I can't say that I highly recommend it, but I enjoyed it.
September 16, 2018
The title of the book is also its main symbol and and main allegory. Lichfield, where her father is dying (this is not a spoiler, it is brought out at the beginning of the book), represents death, and the road, of course, is the one we all take-- the road leading to death is life. But Lively is not so simplistic as the preceding would suggest. The road goes both towards death, and away from it. The destination of Lichfield is death, but in this story it also represents a stirring of life. Moreover, there is not only the rather straight line of the road, but a circularity to the story in that certain characteristics and situations happen more than once. The different families have similar structures--husband and wife, two children, less than optimum marriage. Anne's parents had a son and a daughter, and Anne has a son and a daughter. Children resemble their parents. There are themes about history in general, and in a parallel way, personal histories.
October 24, 2010
I found this book easy to read as a smoothly written, cohesive and well-told story. It is a universal tale of a middle aged woman looking inward, of her personal growth during a challenging time in her life told in a profoundly English, reserved manner. Despite it's stoicism though, there is some humour and lightness between the lines which left me with an overall impression of having been entertained rather than left feeling glum. There is a little spark at the end that was perhaps predictable but was necessary for the completeness of the story so we can feel the characters will move on with their lives, having learned something about themselves. I didn't love this novel but enjoyed it for what it was. This is the first of Penelope Lively's works I have read and will happily pick up another in the future.
October 8, 2015
About the forth PL book I've read. I must admit I gravitated towards this in a second hand bookstore as I grew up not far from Lichfield which is a small town in England. This dragged for the first 60 or so pages. Very ordinary middle England people doing ordinary things, slowly. But it picked up in the second half when the main characters relationship with her dying father was unpicked and there was a great scene recalled by many characters in retrospect set in Coventry cathedral. There is a lot of history/ancient buildings as metaphors for family relationships. Interesting detail from Britain in the 70s - real things costing 10p or the food people get served in pubs/restaurants. Prawn cocktail.
September 13, 2023
I've read this book so many times and each time I get something different from it.
This time around I see her superb technique, her mastery of shifting points of view and timelines, maybe both on one page.
And she pokes fun left, right and centre. Those who only value exotic archaeology above local, the English ethos of avoiding a scene at all costs. Those who value artefacts not for what they represent, but as signnallers of prestige.
But I think it was only on this reading that I found the ending scary. It felt as if all options were locked away for Anne. From now on she would only have a half life.
This time around I see her superb technique, her mastery of shifting points of view and timelines, maybe both on one page.
And she pokes fun left, right and centre. Those who only value exotic archaeology above local, the English ethos of avoiding a scene at all costs. Those who value artefacts not for what they represent, but as signnallers of prestige.
But I think it was only on this reading that I found the ending scary. It felt as if all options were locked away for Anne. From now on she would only have a half life.
July 18, 2019
A well crafted book from a great author. The road to Lichfield could be taken as being symbolic of the road towards death, as the protagonist drives from her home in Berkshire to the Staffordshire city where her father is dying in a nursing home, yet it may also be thought of as a road towards life, given the adventure that awaits her there. The novel was written in 1977 so may in some sense appear dated, yet the story is timeless. There are no cell phones, little computer activity, but human behaviour is not so very different than it is in present day.
May 19, 2019
I find Penelope Lively’s books very thought provoking. This book is about a father dying, whilst at the same time, his daughter is facing a crisis in her marriage. The two events seem to be linked together and become an analogy for each other. It is a contemplation on life . . which is not always as it appears to be. This book makes you think about life and what it’s all about . . a question that remains unanswered.
November 8, 2024
A rather depressing but probably timeless depiction of middle age for the middle classes. We read of a dying parent, job frustration, marital boredom and dealing with teenage angst. These events make the lead character and possibly some readers too, question their life decisions and consider a different future.
It is well written as you would expect from Miss Lively but the plot is light and the characters rather bland. What saddens me most though is that it seems to be suggesting that we should be happy with mediocrity.
It is well written as you would expect from Miss Lively but the plot is light and the characters rather bland. What saddens me most though is that it seems to be suggesting that we should be happy with mediocrity.
February 18, 2025
Reading this novel took me back to a phase in which I read several of Anne Tyler's books. As with Ms Tyler's tales, the author is not trying to shock and horrify us but to encourage us to contemplate the perplexities of middle-age. Her protagonist is not extraordinary in any way but finds herself stuck between a past she regrets at least to some extent and a future still lacking any meaningful content. Not to be recommended if you are hoping for excitement and surprises but very well written and, in my view, enjoyable.
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