Consequences

Penelope Lively is one of the most consistently rewarding novelists I know of. Is it a British female thing? Because it occurs to me I could say the same of Anita Brookner and Iris Murdoch (and Jane Austen, for that matter). In Consequences, Lively's subject is how happenstance shapes our lives. In a way, it's a no-brainer: things happen, and so Things Happen. As the story begins, two young people from very different backgrounds happen to sit on the same bench in a London park and effect a very unconventional union--particularly unusual in the 1930s, I imagine. The novel essentially tells of the consequences of that meeting, for themselves, their families, and their descendants. Beautifully written and deeply moving.

If you are in the mood for an intelligent romance that is full of interesting characters, amply emotional but seldom sappy, you will enjoy Penelope Lively's CONSEQUENCES. All the more so if (like me) you have a British connection or have overlapped the three generations that the author describes. Her subject is family, and the continuation of family over time. The novel opens with a young woman, Lorna, meeting her future husband on a London park bench, some years before the Second World War. It continues with her daughter Molly, and ends with her grand-daughter Ruth who, in the first years of the new milennium, reaches a beautiful epiphany that brings the story round full circle. The title refers to family game a little like Mad Libs that the author must have played as a child. Stock questions are asked, beginning: "Mr. ___ met Miss ___ at ___". Players write their answer to each blank on a sheet of paper, which they fold over and hand to the next person. After the narrative passes through courtship and marriage, the fun comes when players unfold the papers and read out the mismatched tales that result. One of the last questions in the sequence is "And the consequence was ___". Lively's point is that the consequences of falling in love are by no means predictable even within one generation, let alone over three, but they are nonetheless emotionally linear and conceal a meaning that is there if you look for it. The subject of families is all the more interesting here in that this one is almost the opposite of the traditional family tree spreading outwards with ever-widening branches. Lorna essentially breaks with her upper-middle-class family in order to get married, and for one reason and another none of the subsequent generations is very large. Indeed, Lively writes of a period when the very concept of family, at least in Britain, was being called into question. Lorna's pre-war marriage is the only one in the conventional sense of raising children; although there are other marriages in the book, happy and otherwise, and obviously other children, the axiomatic connection between the two no longer applies. While I found the book very engaging, I can't say that it is a major work. Romance is always somewhat self-indulgent, and this is no exception. Falling in love (and in the later periods, falling into bed) happens a little too easily. This reader found himself trying to find partners for his heroines, getting annoyed with them when they failed to notice the obvious clues, and feeling just a little bit smug when they finally accepted the obvious. Yes, there is heartbreak in the book, and not all the connections work out, but that pervasive optimism is always somewhere in the background. In the same way, although the characters may at times wonder where the next meal is coming from, they all lead far from humdrum lives: artist, master printer, festival organizer, art-dealer, journalist. But the characters also reflect the changing interests of

This is a truly warming story of three generations of women, spanning 70 years from 1935. In pre WW2 England, Lorna met Matt on a bench in the park, following a terrible row with her mother, and her life changed instantly, and for the better. Lorna is the product of a solidly middle class upbringing with all of its traditions and mores, while Matt is an engraver/book illustrator and therefore when she tells her horrified parents that she and Matt intend to marry and live in a rundown cottage in the country, they cannot believe that she is marrying so far "down" and virtually wipe their hands of her. Matt is killed in Crete in WW2, leaving Lorna to raise their daughter alone until she meets Lucas, a former friend of Matt's. They eventually marry and have a daughter and the remainder of the book is the story of this generation and the following one and is a beautifully written, thoughtful account of the lives of these women and one which I thoroughly recommend.

You can almost smell the wood smoke and taste the tea and biscuits in Penelope Lively's CONSEQUENCES, so eloquent and emotionally direct are all its elements. The characters, the prose, and the tragic but uplifting story of three generations of women --- from World War II to the present in a Britain that continues to redefine itself --- is a wonderful literary achievement. The story begins with Lorna and Matt, a rich, sensible girl who has grown up with all the privileges of polite society and a Welsh man whose country upbringing somehow has led him to London to study art. A chance meeting on a park bench brings them together, and against all odds and the fears of their parents, they forge a life in the country. This turns out to be an idyll, regardless of the fact that they have no running water or the other amenities they're both used to. Their adventure in the country proves to be inspiring for Matt and happy for Lorna. But as the specter of World War II sounds its sirens across the beautiful landscape, Matt and Lorna bring a baby, Molly, into their midst. Suddenly, the three of them are a family in crisis. Matt is shipped off to war and tragedy ensues. Molly is eventually left living with a kindly stepfather and making her own way into the world. So we follow her into the madness that is postwar England. Her own encounter with a wealthy older man from London leads her into the modern-day world. Molly's own daughter, saddled with the echoes of regret and sadness that have shaped the lives of her family's women, goes back to those halcyon days of her grandmother's early marriage to try to resolve the conflicts and emotional baggage that bogs down the three generations throughout the turbulent eras in which they spread out. Penelope Lively is a thoroughly modern writer, but the memories of England's great catastrophes are reflected quite surely in the stories of these three fully-fleshed characters and the men who surround them. CONSEQUENCES shares some of its tragic whimsy with great works like Noel Coward's BRIEF ENCOUNTER and THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA by C.S. Lewis, literary masterpieces that employed the backdrop of the war to put the history of their beloved country into a new context, using love and fantasy as the ramps. The book speaks to any generation plagued by war and conflict, and surely deserves an audience today that can relate to its heartrending twists and turns. As love hurtles these women into new lives filled with both hope and tragedy, so does CONSEQUENCES hurtle us into bright and shining hearts filled with the positive message that, even in bad times, life can go on --- and smashingly so. --- Reviewed by Jana Siciliano

Consequences brought me back to the images of my father in World War II based in Rattlesden, England near the coast. The cottage brought me closer to the memories of the memorial built by the British on the occassion of the 40th anniversary of DDay. Ms Lively's beautiful, eloquent descriptions of a time past and the view of a life now so very dim were lovely. I felt at peace in the end and in touch with my father who died 35 years ago and never got to see how very much he and so many others meant to the English people.