Near the top of one of the floor to ceiling bookshelves in my bedroom is the Penelope Lively section. These shelves will always remind me of lockdown times when I was compulsively buying books and then manically reading them. The piles on my bedside table…and on the floor…became impossibly vertiginous and soon two tall bookcases arrived to basically house my habit.
If I don’t have the complete P. Lively oeuvre, then I very nearly do. One day I will go through everything she has published and fill in any gaps that I find.
Anyway, I recently picked out ‘How it All Began.’ I hadn’t read it for years and couldn’t remember the story, which was good as it would be like coming to it anew.
The premise is that usually we don’t notice the progression of events and how one particular incident, even if small and apparently not worthy of attention, ripples outwards and can cause many further narratives, fundamentally unattached and separate but all from the same starting point. ‘How it all began’ in this book is with an elderly lady being mugged on her way home. (I do hope the author was not writing from experience here.) She has to stay with her daughter and son- in- law when she comes out of hospital, and unexpected and unplanned relationships flow from this situation.
Part of the reason that I love Penelope Lively’s writing so much is that it is a joy to read. It is skilled and fluid, nothing is stilted or awkward and the words flow from my eyes to my brain with a delicious smoothness. It always gives me a special sort of happiness. Also, I have great empathy for the way she thinks and how she experiences life in general and family life in particular. She is twenty something years older than me and as I reread these novels, most of which were written in the last few decades of the twentieth century, I see how life is as an older person. I understand more than I did, simply by having lived my life.
I don’t usually turn down the pages of books as I have a lovely collection of bookmarks but I do sometimes turn down the bottom corner of a page and this is my own code for: there is something here that I want to look at again or write down or ensure I remember. The Lively section of books is full of turned down bottom corners.
I offer you this example, Charlotte, the character who has been mugged, reflects:
“Old-age worry is its own climate. The assault upon health is inevitable, rather than an unanticipated outrage. You remain solipsistic – we are all of us that – but the focus of worry is further from the self. You worry about loved ones – that tiresome term, as bad as closure – you worry about the state of the nation, about sixteen-year-olds sticking knives into one another, about twenty-year-olds who can’t find a job; you worry about the absence of sparrows and the paucity of butterflies, about destruction of habitats; you worry about the decline of language, about the books that are no longer read, about the people who don’t read. All of which is entirely unproductive – self-indulgent, maybe. Leave the knives to the police, the habitats to the RSPB. If people don’t read, that’s their choice, a lifelong book habit may itself be some sort of affliction.”
Oh my goodness, if only I knew the Islington garden square in which she lived, I would buy pain au chocolat and flowers and go for coffee. We would have so much to talk about. I agree with almost everything she writes!
I have read several books lately that have ‘afterwords.’ They seem to be a sort of reflection by the writer of what has gone before. I find them illuminating and interesting. In this book, the last chapter, number 18, takes this form although the author does not label it as such. It ties up the endings of each character’s story, something many readers want from a novel. Penelope Lively does this with a nod and a raised eyebrow to witty, wry comedy and with powerful, astute observation.
‘How it All Began’ offers you stylish, engaging storytelling of the highest quality. Enjoy!