Pack of Cards: Stories 1978-1986
by Penelope Lively
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An "abundantly rich collection" of short stories by the Man Booker Prize–winning author (The New York Times Book Review).In Pack of Cards, Penelope Lively shares moments in the everyday world that are not always open to observation, as she delves into the minutiae of her characters' lives.
Whether she writes about a widow on a visit to Russia, a small boy's consignment to boarding school, or an agoraphobic housewife, Lively takes the reader behind a closed curtain, through the locked show more door, and into a world that seems at first mundane—then proves to be uniquely memorable.
"Witty, profoundly civilized . . . This captivatingly intelligent collection confirms Lively's place as one of Britain's most imaginative and important contemporary writers." —Library Journal
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Member Reviews
Nothing Missing but the Samovar - A beautifully rendered story told from the perspective of a German student visiting the estate of an arisrocratic English family who have fallen on hard times yet maintain a wonderfully staid optimism and love of their farm and way of life. Very English.
Servants Talk about People: Gentlefolk discuss things - I'll remember this every time I dine in a restaurant. funniest story I've read in years!
Long Night at Abu Simbel - Very funny tale of how rapidly our veneer of civility wears away in the face of a bit of difficulty far from home.
The Art of Biography - Loved the juxtaposition of a great historical love affair and the narrator's rather pedestrian one.
Servants Talk about People: Gentlefolk discuss things - I'll remember this every time I dine in a restaurant. funniest story I've read in years!
Long Night at Abu Simbel - Very funny tale of how rapidly our veneer of civility wears away in the face of a bit of difficulty far from home.
The Art of Biography - Loved the juxtaposition of a great historical love affair and the narrator's rather pedestrian one.
Some stories stand out more than others, but, overall, I have a fondness for Lively's writing style. My favorites are: "A Clean Death," "Venice, Now and Then," "Grow Old Along With Me...," "The Darkness Out There," "A Long Night at Abu Simbel," "Clara's Day," and "The French Exchange."
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Short Story Collections and Anthologies
260 works; 42 members
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Author Information
73+ Works 14,491 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
- Canonical title
- Pack of Cards: Stories 1978-1986
- Original publication date
- 1986
- Quotations
- Twenty-eight interviews, duly recorded and filed. Seventeen card index boxes. Seven hundred and nineteen letters in the British Library and the University of Texas and in God knows how many box files and drawers of desks. Not... (show all)es and footnotes and references and cross-references; checks and cross-checks and headings and sub-headings. Names and places and times and dates. All sewn up and stashed away, or just about. A man’s life reduced to paper and print or rather, card and tempo pen. The material, the valuable laboriously gathered material for the definitive biography of Edward Lamprey, poet and man of letters, born eighteen-ninety-three, died nineteen-fifty-eight.
-- from `The Art of Biography'
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Statistics
- Members
- 176
- Popularity
- 185,384
- Reviews
- 2
- Rating
- (4.15)
- Languages
- English, French
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 8
- ASINs
- 3
