- Paperback: 224 pages
- Publisher: HarperPerennial; Reprint edition (28 Feb 1991)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0060973706
- ISBN-13: 978-0060973704
- Product Dimensions: 20.3 x 13.2 x 1.5 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,367,713 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Passing On
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
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.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
About the Author
Penelope Lively has written many prize-winning novels for adults and children. They include: The Road To Lichfield, According To Mark, Moon Tiger (which won the 1987 Booker Prize), Heat Wave, Spiderweb, The Photograph, Making It Up and Consequences. Penelope Lively lives in London.
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First Sentence
The coffin stuck fast at the angle of the garden path and the gateway out into the road. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
The coffin stuck fast at the angle of the garden path and the gateway out into the road. Read the first page
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is a beautifully crafted book. I found the story believable and very poignant. The characters are well rounded and I felt I could really see the house and surroundings. Thoroughly recommend it!
7 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is a quietly reflective book which describes the lives of siblings, Edward and Helen, living in the family home together, on into old age. It is told mainly from Helen's point of view and concerns the recent death of their mother, who was manipulative and spiteful even until the end. A younger daughter managed to escape, but Helen and Edward always remained in thrall to her petty cruelties and rigid social code. Helen might have escaped a couple of times but potential lovers were sternly rebuffed and even discouraged in underhand ways as the malignant mother did her best to keep her two eldest children at her beck and call.
Helen realises that all of this is partly their own fault and the reader has to concur that, both now in their fifties, the mixture of shyness, diffidence and the stiff timidity with which she and Edward approach the world could well have put their chances of anything different beyond their reach. Nothing much happens in the book - Edward gets into trouble for being an atheist at the girls' school where he is a teacher and then gropes the young male gardener, displaying his incipient homosexuality for the first time in his life. There are no consequences for either incident.
Meanwhile Helen is attracted to a local solicitor until she finds out he is a bit of a womaniser, who is not much interested in sex (a strange combination, I felt). The book, in its own way, is as timid and unforthcoming as its characters and it is a shame it couldn't have had a bit more lively realism.
A further mistake is made by Lively when she tries to bring in young people - these being a couple of punks who are the sister's offspring. A more unlikely seeming pair I can hardly imagine. Lively imagines the punk generation rode motorbikes and were into Reggae. Someone should have told her the truth.
Helen realises that all of this is partly their own fault and the reader has to concur that, both now in their fifties, the mixture of shyness, diffidence and the stiff timidity with which she and Edward approach the world could well have put their chances of anything different beyond their reach. Nothing much happens in the book - Edward gets into trouble for being an atheist at the girls' school where he is a teacher and then gropes the young male gardener, displaying his incipient homosexuality for the first time in his life. There are no consequences for either incident.
Meanwhile Helen is attracted to a local solicitor until she finds out he is a bit of a womaniser, who is not much interested in sex (a strange combination, I felt). The book, in its own way, is as timid and unforthcoming as its characters and it is a shame it couldn't have had a bit more lively realism.
A further mistake is made by Lively when she tries to bring in young people - these being a couple of punks who are the sister's offspring. A more unlikely seeming pair I can hardly imagine. Lively imagines the punk generation rode motorbikes and were into Reggae. Someone should have told her the truth.
10 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Passing On was my introduction to Penelope Lively and now I'm looking for her other books to see if they're as good! Reading this novel was a much more pleasurable (and poignant) experience than any plot synopsis I could provide would indicate, so just try to get hold of a copy-and enjoy!
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