Perfect Happiness
by Penelope Lively
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Perfect Happiness is the fifth novel by Booker Prize winning author Penelope Lively. Frances, happily married for many years, and suddenly plunged into mourning. Her international celebrity husband Steve has died leaving her unprepared and vulnerable. At first she is completely submerged in her own loss until, shocked into feeling by the unexpected revelations and private sufferings of others, she is drawn agonizingly into new life - not into perfect happiness but into the sunlight of new show more hope. Penelope Lively's moving and beautifully observed novel illuminates two terrifying taboos of the twentieth-century - death and grief. 'A triumph' Spectator Penelope Lively is the author of many prize-winning novels and short-story collections for both adults and children. She has twice been shortlisted for the Booker Prize: once in 1977 for her first novel, The Road to Lichfield, and again in 1984 for According to Mark. She later won the 1987 Booker Prize for her highly acclaimed novel Moon Tiger. Her other books include Going Back; Judgement Day; Next to Nature, Art; Perfect Happiness; Passing On; City of the Mind; Cleopatra's Sister; Heat Wave; Beyond the Blue Mountains, a collection of short stories; Oleander, Jacaranda, a memoir of her childhood days in Egypt; Spiderweb; her autobiographical work, A House Unlocked; The Photograph; Making It Up; Consequences; Family Album, which was shortlisted for the 2009 Costa Novel Award, and How It All Began. She is a popular writer for children and has won both the Carnegie Medal and the Whitbread Award. She was appointed CBE in the 2001 New Year's Honours List, and DBE in 2012. Penelope Lively lives in London. show lessTags
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There's only so much that can be written about death and the resultant grief. The process must be unique for each one of us. This novel reveals the painful path to a new beginning for recently widowed Frances. We meet her eight months after her celebrity husband has died. The novel tracks her through her initial shock and sorrow. Then the private suffering of others (her sister-in-law and son, primarily) prompts her gradual recovery of a new sense of hope for herself and the idea of an altered but purposeful future.
There's nothing grand about this story, but it is told by someone with emotional intelligence, who writes with a fine understanding about the deep suffering brought about when a loved one dies.
There's nothing grand about this story, but it is told by someone with emotional intelligence, who writes with a fine understanding about the deep suffering brought about when a loved one dies.
A moving and eloquent illumination of the quintessential question, "What is happiness"? Based on a young widow's experience, the author explores grief and the road through mourning, and where the concept of being comparatively happy can wind up being a solace. Penelope Lively is particularly accomplished in conveying the philosophical development of complex emotions.
A beautifully and moving novel illuminating two terrifying taboos of the 20th century - death and grief.
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73+ Works 14,544 Members
Penelope Lively has written over 18 books for children, and over 15 titles for adults, distinguishing herself on both levels. Among the awards she has received are the coveted Booker Prize for the adult novel "Moon Tiger" (1987) and the Carnegie Medal for the highly acclaimed juvenile work, "The Ghost of Thomas Kempe" (1973). In Lively's writing, show more for both adults and children, the recurrent theme is interpreting the past through exploring the function of memory. "My particular preoccupation as a writer is with memory. Both with memory in the historical sense and memory in the personal sense." Beginning her writing career in the early 1970's, Lively wrote exclusively for children for over a decade. Because children have limited memories, devices were used to explore their perceptions of the past, such as ghosts in "Uninvited Ghosts and Other Stories" (1985), and a sampler in "A Stitch in Time' (1976). Lively's first adult novel, "The Road to Lichfield" (1977) was the result of turning to an older audience when she felt inspiration running out. Her adult novels include "Passing On" (1995), the story of a mother's legacy to her children and 'Oleander, Jacarandi: A Childhood Perceived' (1994) which is a memoir of Lively's childhood. Penelope (Low) Lively, born March 17, 1933 in Cairo, Egypt, had a most unusual childhood. She grew up in Cairo with no formal education until age 12, when her family put her in boarding school in England. After earning a B.A. in history at Oxford in 1955, she married Jack Lively, a university professor, whom she calls her most useful critic. They have a son and a daughter, Adam and Josephine. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Common Knowledge
- Original publication date
- 1983
- First words
- The fifth Brandenburg.
- Quotations
- She had given him some guidance about indexing, of which she apparently had experience, and he had tried to give the impression of taking note while searching for some way to ensure another meeting. Consequently, he could no ... (show all)longer remember what she had said about indexing.
Solitude is enjoyed only by those who are not alone; the lonely feel differently about it.
Frances saw in his expression the flicker of awkwardness that she generated now all around her. The bereaved are faintly leprous.
When you have been in the habit of expectation, of dangerous and excessive expectation, and when planning, fruitless planning, has been the practice of a lifetime, and when such habits are arbitrarily broken, a substitute is ... (show all)necessary.
I am hitched, again, to time and to the world.
[Books] could not explain the shocking truth that when someone you love dies they cease to be there any more in a way that is barely credible, or that happiness scarcely gives you time to know it for what it is or that unhapp... (show all)iness is pain. - Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)She drove towards her house, neither happy nor grieving, looking not backwards into the day but on into the next.
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Statistics
- Members
- 151
- Popularity
- 217,397
- Reviews
- 3
- Rating
- (3.53)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 9
- ASINs
- 3
