- Hardcover: 224 pages
- Publisher: Viking; First edition (16 Nov 1998)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0670869066
- ISBN-13: 978-0670869060
- Product Dimensions: 22.1 x 14 x 2.5 cm
- Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,237,983 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Product Description
A novel about an anthropologist who retires to a small Somerset village, where she finds that life is as subtle and elaborate as any she has encountered in her work. In particular, she tries to fathom her fierce neighbour who governs her family with a menacing force. From the author of BEYOND THE BLUE MOUNTAINS and HEAT WAVE.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Format:Hardcover
This tale of a female social anthropologist trying to adapt to retirement in a Somerset cottage, while musing on her past and its relationships in a variety of settings, is well below Penelope Lively's excellent best. Of course, this writer's virtues are on display - her succinct, brisk writing style, her amusement at human follies, her intelligence, her ability to evoke past times and past mores and the ways in which they vividly return to the memory decades later. However, it seemed altogether a little thin, the characters insufficiently realised, the revelations at the end largely predictable. Having recently read her vastly superior 'Heatwave' - also on the theme of hidden violence and passions behind a seemingly idyllic setting - this seems very weak in comparison.
1 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This is, in many ways, a typical Penelope Lively book. The present situation of the protagonist is interlaced with memories of her earlier life and reflections that she is always an observer not a doer. There is a subplot concerning alienated neighbours which is perhaps not explained as well as it should be or rather is too fragmentary for my taste. The book is however well written and comparatively short- a blessing in this age of blockbusters. In the end I enjoyed the book, read it quickly and have been mulling over it for the last couple of days. That seems not bad to me.
1 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
After hearing so much about Penelope Lively i decided to give her a go. What a struggle, is all i can say, fair enough i suppose if you've got nothing else to do. I only hope that her other works were better, there seemed to be no end to this book and it went on forever!!
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