Passing on - Softcover

Lively, Penelope

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140119329 ISBN 13: 9780140119329

Publisher: Penguin Books Canada, Limited, 2005

Synopsis

A domineering old woman dies in a Cotswold village. Her death "releases" her two middle-aged unmarried children - a spinster librarian and a nature-loving schoolmaster - to make their lives.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

Booker Prize-winning author Penelope Lively is that rare writer who goes from strength to strength in book after perfectly assured book. In Passing On, she applies her distinctive insight and consummate artistry to the subtle story of a domineering and manipulative mother's legacy to her children. With their mother's death, Helen and Edward, both middle-aged and both unmarried, are left to face the ramifications of their mother's hold on their lives for all of these years. Helen and Edward slowly learn to accept what has been lost in their own lives and embrace what can yet be retrieved.

"The richest and most rewarding of her novels."-Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post Book World

"This quiet novel will delight Penelope Lively's devoted readers, of whom the present writer is one. Passing On is, for my money, her most attractive novel to date."-Anita Brookner, The Spectator

"Passing On feels like real life drawn to scale, where private dreams dwarf the daily routine. . . . An expert at articulating character through place . . . Lively has a gift for invention and control. . . . The slow unfolding of secrets gives the book tension without melodrama."-Roz Spafford, San Francisco Chronicle

"Her command of narrative is fluent and self-assured, the mark of a novelist completely at ease with her craft."-Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

"Engrossing . . . Lively writes in a deceptively simple style passed down from nineteenth-century novelist Jane Austen via Barbara Pym to a new generation of British women authors. . . . The writing is sophisticated, with witty observations of people and their foibles. And the characters' narrow lives shed light on much larger issues of personal-and global-concern."-Judith Rosen, Boston Sunday Herald

"Sly subtleties, keen observations and raw emotional power . . . Remarkably fuses the comic and the tragic in a graceful, fluid narrative."-Sarah Gold, Newsday

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.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Books Canada, Limited
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0140119329
• ISBN 13: 9780140119329
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224