Customer Reviews

Consequences

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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 their respective periods; Lively is very good at placing her characters within the mindset of their time. External details, however, are more of a mixed bag. While her descriptions of the changing face of London, for example, are well observed, some of the incidental references, such as the mentions of Google or the Cuban missile crisis, seem forced. Since she jumps around in time a lot anyway, she may have thought that these temporal landmarks were essential, but there are places where they only confuse, and occasionally they seem downright anachronisms. Nonetheless, the most important time element in Lively's writing is emotional continuity, and in this respect she is superb. No more so than in her final chapter, where past and present meet in the possibility of yet another romance.

I don't know why it's taken me so long to read a Penelope Lively novel. I have some memory of starting one (perhaps the Booker Prize winner?) and putting it down, but I have no idea why I did so. At any rate, a friend who is also addicted to the Maisie Dobbs novels by Jacqueline Winspear also recommended this. Not that one has to do with the other except that they both have British heroines and take place in the past. Actually, "Consequences" ends around 2000 but the crux of the novel, the circumstance from which the resulting consequences arise, occurs on a park bench in London in 1935. That is where Lorna, an upper middle class girl who is in despair over her mother's insistence that she groom herself for an advantageous marriage, meets Matt, an aspiring artist who is busy drawing ducks when he notices her. Naturally he is totally unacceptable to her parents but that is just one of his charms and the two fall totally in love.

If you like black and white movies where there is much romance and doomed love, this is the story for you.

But this minimizes the book. It is as much a tale of this couple's daughter and grandaughter and the people who touch and change their lives as it is of Lorna and Matt, whose spirits permeate the book.

In the interest of full exclosure, I listened to this book narrated by Josephine Bailey. At first I found Ms. Bailey's narration a bit flat but her character voices are marvelous and her style of narration perfectly suits Lively's writing. Very English (the pronouns "he" and "she" are almost never used; "one" is the preferred pronoun, as in "One never knows, does one?") and sometimes the more modern characters sound rather old fashioned but by the time you get to them, you'll be enthralled by what happens to this quirky group. Lively tends to write in lists: descriptions of scenery, preferences, books, emotions (now I'm doing it)seemed somewhat pedantic but more than halfway through I was looking forward to hearing what the collected items in a ramshackle house in Fulham consisted of. The descriptions within the lists are wonderfully evocative and pretty soon I was on board with the whole listmania thing.

It's odd, but try it. It's bittersweet, as you would expect from a tale told about three generations of a family, but never maudlin. I'm looking forward to my next Penelope Lively novel.

If you feel that commitments are outdated, and that drifting aimlessly with no vision from one generation to the next is a great way to create a legacy, than this book is for you. Because nobody learns anything except to grab what's in front of you.

It starts off charmingly enough - boy meets girl, different backgrounds to overcome, love conquering, and commitment. But that's where it ends. Lively leaves no doubt that while they understand commitment, this doesn't get passed on. Thus the legacy begins (or ends). Daughter Molly wanders in and out of relationships, specifically not looking for anything except self-preservation/gratification. And this gets passed on to Ruth, who has gained nothing from her parents or grandparents experiences.

Marriage for Ruth? Sure. Why not. It didn't happen the way she thought it would, but apparently that was okay. Kind of in the same thought process of impulsively buying the dog you'd been thinking about in the back of your mind. And when she tires of it, ditch it. However, If she'd have treated a dog like she'd have treated her marriage, there would have been an outcry!

Apparently, this is Lively's view on life. Live for the day, try what you might, it may or may not work out. If it doesn't (and according to her, it most likely won't), that's life. You can't expect more. It's what you get.

So after chapters and chapters of this, I got very depressed. Personally, I'm glad my parents passed on a legacy of hope and a moral anchor. I want the same for my children, and in the end, I believe they'll thank me.

I enjoyed the first 100 pages of this book and then i got BORED. Nothing REALLY happens after the first generation of characters dies out. Plus, the author's prose is nice, but she spends way too much time detailing what people were thinking, should have been thinking, thought of thinking..... a little too much talk and not enough action.

I gave this three stars because Penelope Lively is a good writer. She has a way with dialogue and can keep the reader galloping along up to a point. However, the characters in this story aside from the first two just don't have any gravitas. They seldom have any strong beliefs, drift in and out of relationships, then ditch their committments as fast as they adopt them.

I kept reading hoping that I would find some redeeming attributes in these particular characters and their situations. It didn't happen.

I read Lively's newest novel, "How It All Began" and enjoyed it. I didn't have the same reaction when I read this one.

Really enjoyed this novel. The author evokes the historical setting for each of the generations, starting with the Grandmother, Lorna, as a young woman. Her story of love and loss is moving; her fortitude, resourcefulness and passionate love for Matt made her my favorite character. But all the characters are likable and well-drawn. The younger women are as complex as Lorna, and their loves even more so. Highly recommend this diverting little novel.

No one is exempt from history is the theme of this book. There are consequences in personal lives from epic events such as WWII when the first major consequence in this book occurs. And it sends out ripples over the next three generations' lives. How the characters manage to survive and thrive despite the consequences is the story behind this story.

Our library fiction group here in Connecticut read this book. One member lived in London during the Blitz and remembered the doodlebugs, as described in this book, bomb the street behind their home. Her grandmother thought it was going to fall on their house as the noise stopped overhead. She said it was much worse than this book described, but still you felt the consequences. This was a good book group read which created lively discussion.

We enjoyed the characters, the story line and author's unique spare prose. Penelope Lively's books are always a pleasure to read and this was no exception.

I've only just read this book (suddenly I have time on my hands), and while I love a good multi-generational family saga, I found this pretty tough going at times - I really did have to press on to the end. It starts off pretty well, but then I found myself thinking about other things I had to do while I was reading. This is never a good sign, and was probably caused by the focus on detail in the absence of action. Maybe others might have a better attention span, but I need to be engaged start to finish.

Lively is a good writer, and I enjoy her prose. The characters and ideas in this book are good, but overall it's a bit plodding with too much analysis and foretelling -- not enough of the characters and their stories. Still, it was a quick read that I enjoyed.