Hmmm... interesting. It's a book of "this could have been my memoirs if things had just been a little different". It tells us something about Penelope Lively, but isn't straight fact. Despite this linkage, it can be seen as a series of short stories, and I think it definitely succeeds as that. Perhaps not enough character development in each story for my liking. ( )

I really can't pick my favorite Lively novel, but this collection of what-could-have-been vignettes is certainly up there. Lively's usual delicious prose, combined with hints of autobiography, is twisted into fiction spanning the 40s-80s. I'm not sure I can pick a favorite story or permutation of Lively. I can't recommend this book enough! ( )

I read this novel for book club, so didn’t exactly know what I was getting into – just knew the basic premise that the author was writing an ‘anti-memoir’, versions of her life that were possible but didn’t exist. Although I’d pictured something else, I wasn’t disappointed. Lively’s prose is unobtrusive, but detailed, with well-chosen phrasing. The book is really more like a series of stories, connected by the author’s introduction to what actually happened and how it could have changed. I appreciated the fact that while some of the stories were obvious in how different her life would have been – her death in a couple, her husband going off to war, moving to the US and marrying an American – others just described small changes (in one, she goes on an archaeological dig, but there’s no indication it changed her career – just that she would remember it for a long time). After I’d read some of the stories, it seemed like the actual plot for a few of them could be a cliché – the caring nanny dealing with a shy charge and self-involved mother, the girl who becomes a conservative control freak after her upbringing with a hippie-type mother – but I never thought about it while I was reading, due to the already established framework and Lively’s prose and attention to detail. In many stories, the ‘Penelope’ character is just a side note to the action which was a nice way to vary narrators. I was surprised that she didn’t adhere a little more closely to reality by having all the characters with their correct name (only in a couple was she named Penelope) though this stopped bothering me after awhile. Also, I was hoping she’d depict the moment where the alternative history started – the crucial, but seemingly insignificant decisions that led the change. ( )

I liked this book very much. The "anti-memoir" angle was very interesting and the prose was engaging and enjoyable. Now I have a new author to read! My favorite passage is: "It seems to me that writing is an extension of reading-a step that not every obsessive reader is impelled to take, but, for those who do so, one that springs from serendipitous reading. Books beget books." ( )