In her latest book, which tells the stories of three generations of women, and the men who love them, Penelope Lively presents us with a wholesome vision of England. It begins in 1935, when a debutante called Lorna elopes with a wood engraver, upsetting her mother’s plans to make a brilliant marriage. In a remote cottage in Somerset Lorna learns to skin rabbits, grow vegetables and keep chickens. Lively excels on the subject of tenderness, and this love affair is finely drawn; Lorna and Matt treat each other with kindness, humour and wonder. They have a daughter, Molly, but then war breaks out; by the time Matt volunteers and is sent to Crete, the reader has a sense of foreboding. The tension, and Lorna’s heart, is broken in 1941 when the postman approaches ‘neither smiling nor waving, … the man is beyond apology; he is felled by what he has to do, made speechless. He simply holds out the telegram.’

This is the prelude to the stories of Molly and, later, of her daughter Ruth. The women share a dogged bohemianism and reject conformity in order to live in remote cottages or tall, crooked houses inhabited by a motley collection of eccentrics. They organise poetry readings or work in little