Louise Guinness
Threads of Life
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.’
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'The river’s desecration mirrors Colombia’s long history of violence: "for years we treated it like a sewer," says Ahmed, a survivor of a particularly brutal paramilitary massacre, "just like we treated each other".'
Patrick Wilcken on the Magdalena.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/troubled-waters-3
It's 'all lively and entertaining but rather too black and white. Her account of British politics and the success of the Brexit campaign verges on the cartoonish.'
@David_Goodhart on Anne Applebaum's 'Twilight on Democracy'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/a-tale-of-two-parties
'Robert Silvers, editor of the New York Review of Books, once asked Isaiah Berlin who his ideal dinner guest would be. Without hesitation Berlin exclaimed, ‘William James!’'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/the-pragmatists-progress