Family Album

Penelope Lively is gifted with the ability of acute observation, both of characters and the seemingly mundane activities of domestic life. Her writing is suffused with wit and sensitivity, and while the story is not plot driven, I was captivated throughout the read.

Allersmead, a large Edwardian House in Britain, is where parents Charles and Alison Harper raised their six children, Paul, Gina, Sandra, Roger, Katie and Clare. The family also employed an " au pair" Ingrid, who interestingly remains with the parents long after all of the children have grown up and left home.

Father Charles is a somewhat detached husband and father, busy writing books on other societies, including how such societies raise their children. He ponders on show more societies where " the care and supervision of the children is more or less a collective affair." " The kibbutz has always seemed to him to have been a an eminently sensible arrangement" , as have African Tribal systems" in which all women keep an eye on all children, and men get on with whatever they do." p 37. From those quotes, you can get a good idea of Charles parenting style .

In contrast, Alison is an " earth mother". p19 "For Allison, Allersmead is a kind of glowing archetypal hearth, and she it's guardian." " All she ever wanted was children, a house in which to stow them , and a husband of course" p33.

As the story opens all of the children have grown up and left Allersmead. Interestingly none have children of their own, and all live lives very independent of one another. The family is far flung , physically and psychologically. Only Charles, Alison and the au pair, Ingrid remain at Allersmead,. Paul, the eldest son who tends to run into trouble, comes and goes from the family home.

Gina,aged 39, makes one of her rare returns home with her boyfriend Philip. Philip,the product of a very ordinary two child family, is fascinated by the large family that grew up at Allersmead, and so the recollections of family life begin. That sets off the individual and collective memories of all six of the children who grew up at Allersmead, each one with his / her own chapter though written in the third person.

The dynamics of the family in the past, present and future are captivating. Yes, there is somewhat of a dark , shadowy secret to the family , which, as in most families, is pretty much universally known to all, but never openly acknowledged.

It's always the mark of a fabulous writer , like Penelope Lively, when spot on observations and wit can keep the reader glued to the pages , while seemingly dealing with the mundane.

5 stars show less

Penelope Lively is one of my favorite authors, and this novel did not disappoint. Gina, the oldest daughter of Alison & Charles, brings her partner Philip to meet her parents and stay the weekend at her childhood home, Allersmead. Philip, an only child, is fascinated by Gina and her five siblings, and begins to draw stories out of her. It’s obvious Gina’s family has more than its share of dysfunction, but most of it is masked until Lively expertly reveals a detail, and until those details start to add up and connect. As each family member’s character is developed, Lively shows how the same incident can affect each person in radically different ways. And of course there was a huge family secret which was a constant, unspoken show more presence which everyone pretended to ignore.

This was an excellent character study with a few “aha moments” in the storyline, making for a quick and satisfying read. show less

While this book was undoubtedly well-written, one thing that really bothered me was the characterization. In the childhood sections, each of the family's six children had a clear identity, but in the segments that were written from their adult points-of-view, none of them seemed to have a unique perspective or personality. For a book that was partially about the fact that each person remembers events differently, this was a major failing. I didn't feel that any of the adult characters (except maybe Gina, whose perspective was most dominant) were well-rounded or complex, or that they offered a viewpoint on past events that told the reader something new about what had happened.

Another minutely-observed family structure by Lively. I love her precise, unadorned, meticulous writing, unorthodox situations, authorial distance. She's a cool writer on hot topics, so non-judgmental.

Later note: For readers who found too little characterization, I think that was deliberate. Quantity was more important than quality & individuality to the mother; Ingrid knew -- and remembered -- who did what to who. The kids seem to have developed more in response to each other, than to their upbringing.

This is a wonderful and thoughtful written family story. It's written in a kind of retrospective from each family member. The most interesting thing is that the offspring's point of view, how their childhood and the family life were, is very much related to each other whereas the adult's view is completely different rather like a misty-eyed one.
There is also a family secret, nobody is speaking about, but everybody knows about it. Only in the end the offspring is discussing this matter. There is a major solidarity among the offspring which helps them to be independent. A death in the family brings all members together and is also a restart.

I loved this book-- most particularly in the way the writing conveyed the gestalt of one (large) nuclear family's life across decades, rich with concurrent memories conveyed through the voices of all it's members (some more than others, of course). I liked that this family's mysteries (and of course every family has its mysteries, never clearly elucidated in one clear, unambiguous "truth") are acknowledged and poked at but never revealed in some definitive form. A beautiful, though reserved, piece of writing--and provocative, as all beautifully written prose must be. I had the curious thought, throughout, that the mother, "Allison," reminded me of the characters played by Allison Steadman in Mike Leigh's films-- and that this family show more might have been one of Mike Leigh's families. show less

I have enjoyed other novels by Lively but can't count this one among them. The topic was insubstantial: a family built on what the mother believed to be the ideal family, large, happy, close, with lots of traditions to maintain and keep them in touch with her stereotypical idea of a model family, which of course this family is definitely not. While most of the characters were unpleasant and without depth, the father, who had very little presence at all in the story, still managed to be the most unpleasant. While reading this I was reminded of the type of people I dislike most. But it was Lively's writing style, harsh and staccato with short abrupt sentences, that condemned this book for me.