Making It Up - Softcover

Lively, Penelope

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0143037846 ISBN 13: 9780143037842

Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group, 2006

Synopsis

Look out for Penelope Lively’s new book, The Purple Swamp Hen and Other Stories.

Hailed by critics as a benchmark in a career full of award-winning achievements, Making It Up is Penelope Lively's answer to the oft-asked question, "How much of what you write comes from your own life?" What if Lively hadn't escaped from Egypt, her birthplace, at the outbreak of World War II? What would her life have been like if she'd married someone else? From a hillside in Italy to an archaeological dig, the author explores the stories that could have been hers, fashioning a sublime dance between reality and imagination that confirms her reputation as a singular talent.

About this title

Review

Making It Up, Booker Prize-winning author Penelope Lively's cleverly termed "anti-memoir," is an enthralling examination of how both fate and free will can dramatically alter the lives of each and every one of us. Each of Lively's expertly crafted stories reveals the life she could have lived, had she, or another, chosen a different path. Yet in answering a series of "what if" questions, Lively does more than indulge her imagination; rather, she challenges her readers to examine the consequences of both the significant, and the seemingly trivial decisions we make every day.

Each of the stories in Making It Up deals with a different stage of Lively's life, and examines fictional alternatives to the roads she and others traveled. The Mozambique Channel charts the course of Shirley, a British nanny who accompanies her employer's family to Capetown following the German invasion of Egypt in 1942. In reality, Lively's family emigrated to Palestine; in this alternative universe, the family encounters tragedy on the open seas. The Battle of the Imjin River sends Lively's husband off to fight in the Korean War, thus changing his fate and in turn her destiny. Most compelling of all is Comet, in which the fictional Lively's untimely death is the catalyst for a half sister's second chance at love.

At the end of most narratives, Lively makes a point of reminding readers that while these stories are fictional, they are not impossible. Perhaps is this sense of endless possibility, so expertly conveyed by this talented veteran, that makes this collection so completely riveting. In the end, we are all the ones "for whom things might have spun off elsewhere, who might have become someone else." --Gisele Toueg

About the Author

Penelope Lively grew up in Egypt but settled in England after the war and took a degree in history at St Anne's College, Oxford. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and a member of PEN and the Society of Authors. She was married to the late Professor Jack Lively, has a daughter, a son and four grandchildren, and lives in Oxfordshire and London.

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 novels include Passing On, shortlisted for the 1989 Sunday Express Book of the Year Award, City of the Mind, Cleopatra's Sister and Heat Wave.

Penelope Lively has also written radio and television scripts and has acted as presenter for a BBC Radio 4 program on children's literature. She is a popular writer for children and has won both the Carnegie Medal and the Whitbread Award.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0143037846
• ISBN 13: 9780143037842
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 215