Consequences | Penelope Lively | A heart warming read without mush!

Consequences | Penelope Lively | Fate is Formulaic but fine reading too

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Consequences

	Consequences Penelope Lively Viking Adult, 2007 - 272 pages average customer review:based on 14 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

The Booker Prize-winning author?s first novel since The Photograph is a sweeping saga of three generations of women, their lives, and loves

A chance meeting in St. James?s Park begins young Lorna and Matt?s intense relationship. Wholly in love, they leave London for a cottage in a rural Somerset village. Their intimate life together?Matt?s woodcarving, Lorna?s self-discovery, their new baby, Molly?is shattered with the arrival of World War II. In 1960s London, Molly happens upon a forgotten newspaper?a seemingly small moment that leads to her first job and, eventually, a pregnancy by a wealthy man who wants to marry her but whom she does not love. Thirty years later, Ruth, who has always considered her existence a peculiar accident, questions her own marriage and begins a journey that takes her back to 1941?and a redefinition of herself and of love.

Told in Lively?s incomparable prose, Consequences is a powerful story of growth, death, and rebirth and a study of the previous century?its major and minor events, its shaping of public consciousness, and its changing of lives.

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A heart warming read without mush!

This is a truly warming story of three generations of women, spanning 70 years from 1935. In pre WW2 England, Lorna met Matt on a bench in the park, following a terrible row with her mother, and her life changed instantly, and for the better. Lorna is the product of a solidly middle class upbringing with all of its traditions and mores, while Matt is an engraver/book illustrator and therefore when she tells her horrified parents that she and Matt intend to marry and live in a rundown cottage in the country, they cannot believe that she is marrying so far "down" and virtually wipe their hands of her. Matt is killed in Crete in WW2, leaving Lorna to raise their daughter alone until she meets Lucas, a former friend of Matt's. They eventually marry and have a daughter and the remainder of the book is the story of this generation and the following one and is a beautifully written, thoughtful account of the lives of these women and one which I thoroughly recommend.

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Fate is Formulaic but fine reading too

I had a flu; it was New Years' Eve and everyone was out having fun or no fun. I had to admonish myself not to go the route of self-pity and so I read Consequences right through, losing myself to Penelope Lively's three decades cast of characters.

Although falling in love via Lively is somewhat formulaic I found this book's characters quite wonderful. From Lorna and Matt, whose romance is the first and very well developed, to daugher Molly, who finds love rather later in life, to the granddaughter Ruth, whose story was most obviously plotted, I felt all were interesting people, living from 1935-2001+ and it kept my interest on a pretty hot boil.

Though as David Denby, the film critic observed about the popular Mexican film (name?) that you can't have fate and formulaic together, I will post the film's name when it comes to me: I also enjoyed said unnamed film as much as I did this novel. It was in fact rather comforting to see how falling in love via this author is so very sweet even as it has consequences and I also liked very much arriving back at the beginning here with the third generation living in the same place with the same art we saw being made at the beginning. I highly recommend this book and once "in" it is pretty great and definitely involving, many well drawn bohemian characters.

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PS: The film I couldn't name:

was Babel, which has nothing in common with this book. For Lively is completely chronological here whereas Babel is as David Denby of the New Yorker says: Disordered. I highly recommend that review by Denby because it is unusually wise, check google under Denby + The New Disorder.

But the line I was looking for is apt for this book: "Experience can't be random and also structured like a design." That is why I can't give this book five stars. But Penelope Lively is a great writer.

So sweet it hurts my teeth

Very disappointing, having been a Lively fan in past. The characters and their circumstances are romanticized to the point of caricature. Found myself flipping through the pages to find some scene, any scene, that felt true. Came away empty handed. Cheap trick.

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An Engaging Read but Disappointing

Consequences is a fascinating read. Penelope Lively uses wonderful language and deft perception with the saga of grandmother, daughter and mother. Her characters are believable with adequate glimpses given through the different historical periods. I kept expecting the novel to be a redemptive theory about life, but alas, it was not.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3

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