The Five Thousand and One Nights
by Penelope Lively
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Beyond the Blue Mountains is a collection of short stories by Booker Prize winning author Penelope Lively. The fourteen warmly humorous stories in Beyond the Blue Mountains range from the fantasy of Scheherazade to a dazzling example of chaos theory, depicting in exquisite prose the subtle but significant events that go to create everyday experience. 'The fourteen brief stories in Beyond the Blue Mountains reveal Penelope Lively at her most polished and perceptive. "The Slovenian Giantess" show more is a condensed masterpiece' Sunday Times 'Penelope Lively is a genius and this collection is a joy. In any circumstances, from a wedding to a Christmas shopping expedition, Lively finds an emotional dilemma, engaging the reader as thoroughly as if they were reading a novel and leaving them speechless' Daily Mail 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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Member Reviews
Great short story collection by an accomplished writer (Booker Prize winner) I have not yet read. I'll definitely check out her novels. The title and title story is a riff on 1001 Nights with Scheherazade still telling stories and the poor sultan bored to tears - she seems to be 'borrowing' from Jane Austen and the Brontes - so much thinking and talking, the sultan complains. So he takes a turn with ridiculous action stories that make his wife roll her eyes. Maybe just going to sleep is best? All the women in the stories are empowered especially when it comes to dull men who have high opinions of themselves. Frivolous women are also a target, and look bad in the face of sensible solutions. Women who are taken for granted or put upon by show more family come out on top - the mum who simply leaves all the Christmas dinner makings and does a runner, for example. They have a quaint 1950s feel, but include many modern conveniences we are used to and are meant to be contemporary to the 1990s when they were published. Worth a read, especially if just a quick fix is needed. show less
It's very hard to review or rate this book of short stories because there's such variety among the stories. I loved some and found others entirely uninteresting. If you like Penelope Lively's novels (as I do), there are a few stories here that follow similar style and theme and are very enjoyable. They're all easy reading and it's a short book, so it makes a good break between more serious novels.
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Author Information
73+ Works 14,503 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
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- The Five Thousand and One Nights
- Original publication date
- 1997
- Important places
- Australia; Blue Mountains, New South Wales, Australia; England, UK; Hawkesbury River, Australia; New South Wales, Australia; Sydney, New South Wales, Australia (show all 7); Yugoslavia
- First words
- Myra and George Purbeck, aboard the Empress of Sydney, rode through the Hawkesbury River valley.
- Quotations
- "Tights! ... Get them out!" ordered the boy [with a gun], and Norma moved stiffly to the chest of drawers in which lay new packets of tights and the plastic bags labelled LADDERED and UNLADDERED. She later realised that even... (show all) in her traumatized condition her hand had fallen upon the LADDERED bag..
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Statistics
- Members
- 108
- Popularity
- 298,961
- Reviews
- 2
- Rating
- (3.76)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 5
- ASINs
- 1
