Customer Reviews

Family Album

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4 star:		(5)
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A family that has come undone. Alison and Charles the parents, Ingrid the au pair and the six children, Paul, Gina, Ralph, Sandra, Kate and Clare all live in the lovely old Edwardian home they call Allersmead. Penelope Lively has given us a story of the lives of these nine people and their perspectives of how events shaped their lives.

We learn about the house, Allersmead, 'a gravelly drive, stone urns, lanky shrubs and, in the air, a redolent waft of hearty cooking.' Gina has come home to introduce her new love, Phillip to the family and vice versa. Alison, the mom, the earth mom, all she has wanted her entire life is to have children, and a husband, of course. Charles, the absent father, he lived in the house but he was absent emotionally and little is known about him. Ingrid, the Au pair, who lives happily with the family helping to raise the children and to organize the family. Paul, the oldest son is at home. He is his mother's favorite, but has never been able to do much with the life he was handed. Gina is a journalist who travels the world. She does not share much about her childhood, nor as we come to find out do the other children. There is something hidden, a secret that no one discusses. The children, all adults now, know about the secret, but it has never interfered with their lives, or so they thought. Alison, the mother is oblivious to any secret, her family is her all and be-all, and she does not recognize anything outside of her atmosphere. Charles is too busy with his research and writings to be bothered. Each member of the family discusses their points of view, alternating between the children and the adults. This is done in flashback, as they focus on what they remember. The children are gone, but there are no grandchildren, and we ponder why this is. As the events unfold, the secret is a vague consciousness as everyone circles the truth. There is no big event, it is the slow skillful manner in which Penelope Lively allows this to become devastating.

Penelope Lively has become a favorite author. This new novel is not my favorite, but it kept me wrapped up in her reading for most of a day. Her manner with words and the development of her characters keep us on our toes. I love the fact that she involves us in her novels, we come to know the people and how they think and what they want in life. We can picture them in our mind's eye, and that, my dear friend, is what a great novel is all about.

Highly Recommended. prisrob 11-28-09

Moon Tiger

Consequences (Readers Circle Series)

Making It Up

It was a joy to read this book after Between Here and April. It was such a good, though not great, novel. Maybe it reminded me of my own family in some ways or what my family is going through as the parents age, but I really felt a connection to the family, if not all of the characters.

I will say that I did enjoy the e-mails at the end. I did not think it fractured the flow of the novel. In fact it enhanced the plot. I guess my main issue was the way Lively presenting the concept of memories. I think it would have been better if the characters weren't so actively recounting the past as Peter did in his old bedroom or researching the concept of nostalgia as Charles was. But Lively's ideas about time and perception were thought-provoking.

Penelope Lively's new novel, Family Album, is about a large family that grows up in a large house in suburban London. The Harper family consists of six children, the two parents, and an "au pair girl" who has played an interesting role in family history.

The Harper family revolves around Alison, the mother of the brood, and Allersmead, the Victorian "pile" that the Harper family has lived in for 40 years or so. The father, Charles, a distant figure in the household, is sort of "there, but not there", to his six children. He's a fairly successful writer of non-fiction, often writing about families in far off lands, while moving through his own children's lives at a safe distance. He's often holed up in his library, which is off-limits to the rest of the household. He doesn't get involved with his children, other than with his oldest son, Paul, a neer-do-well who Charles often disparages.

Alison Harper is a "super-Mom". She's the one who wanted a large family and she has made a life for herself seemingly limited to raising the children and keeping the house. She's not the intellectual that her husband is and actually has very little communication with him.

In this melieu the six children - four daughter and two sons - grow up. All but one leave home as soon as possible, but maintain a tenuous connection with family and house. They return to the family home for holidays and birthdays and try, between themselves, to make some sense of their crazy upbringing. An upbringing that only Alison sees as "happy".

Lively is a good writer and most of the nine characters are well drawn. The book goes back and forth in time, depending on who's "telling the story". I found the characters interesting enough so as to almost wish that another writer, maybe one who writes big, fleshy, juicy novels, would take these characters and expand the book.

British novelist Lively, winner of the Booker Prize (Moon Tiger) and an expert in the darkish art of domestic wit, celebrates big, happy families in her 22nd book. To matriarch Alison, family is, simply, what she lives for, even now that her six children have dispersed to distant parts and seldom return.

The novel opens with one such return, however. Gina (second oldest), 39, brings her new boyfriend, Philip, to meet her parents and see her rather larger-than-life childhood setting, Allersmead. The house is a rambling Edwardian pile with seven bedrooms, presided over still by Alison, husband Charles and the Swedish au pair, Ingrid, who arrived 40 years before and has never left.

"The kitchen was the heartland of Allersmead. Of course. That is so in any well-adjusted family home, and Allersmead was a shrine to family....There were children's drawings still tucked behind the crockery on the dresser, a painted papier-māché tiger on a shelf, alongside a row of indeterminate clay animals that someone made earlier. There were named mugs slung from hooks: Paul, Gina, Sandra, Katie, Roger, Clare."

Philip is intrigued, even a little envious, impressed by the many photos and mementos, the large garden, Alison's wonderful and abundant food, the idea of the family teeming over the place.

"Gina continued to hear voices, her life was still flashing at her. It seemed odd that Philip could be impervious to this, that a person with whom one had become so absolutely intimate could be so perversely ignorant. Not know. Not see and hear. One is sealed off, she thought. So is he. So's everyone. No wonder there's mayhem."

Her father, Charles, however, has made an art form out of sealing himself off from the mayhem. "Charles is immersed - in his train of thought, in the organization of words, of sentences. Time passes - but, for him, it seems to stand still. He looks out the window occasionally, unseeing, thoughts tumble in his head. He is elsewhere, inside his mind, in pursuit of an argument, a sequence."

With the help of a small private income, Charles has devoted his life to writing books on any subject that captures his interest. The books are (or were) accessible and widely read, although not by anyone in his immediate family. His study seems an alien, sacrosanct territory inside the fecund chaos of the family manse.

He emerges for meals, engages newcomers (like Philip) in arcane discussions, handles the finances. Alison does everything else. With Ingrid's somewhat implacable assistance. No one seems to know what Ingrid thinks, or ever thought, about anything, yet she is such an integral part of the family Allersmead cannot be imagined without her.

Naturally there are secrets. What family doesn't have secrets?

These begin to emerge after Gina and Philip depart for home and the novel proceeds from various points of view at various times over the last 40 years. Gina's 8th birthday, "of which everyone will remember something different." A summer holiday in Cornwall, which Katie remembers as "one commotion after another," and Roger remembers as "amazing." "I had that kite. I got seriously into marine biology."

There were the cellar games, which excluded adults so completely that they knew nothing about them. The sibling rivalry between cerebral Gina and pretty Sandra. Paul's youthful binges, which have somehow never stopped.

And there is the greatest gulf of all. "...their parents seemed to hover - presences that are entirely known, familiar and also unreachable, enigmatic." As adults the children wonder about them to each other. The six children were obviously Alison's raison d'etre, but what about Charles? Did he want that many? Did he want any?

Alison works hardest at keeping unpleasantness at bay. It's more than sweeping things under the carpet. Alison will do almost anything to preserve her happy family.

And this family has one very big secret, known to all. "Not that there were conversations, exchanges, comments. No one has wished to discuss it; if ever the facts of the matter seemed to smolder dangerously, there would be a concerted move to stamp out the embers, to move away, to find safe territory elsewhere."

This secret comes out fairly early in the novel, the biggest among other, smaller crises that have been dealt with and set aside. With her sharp wit and sympathetic understanding of human nature, Lively explores the ways families conspire in their secrets, the way memories inform a life and each life makes different memories of the same experience, the way one "happy family" is eight individual people all sequestered inside their own heads, all striving after their own interests.

For the reader Alison and Charles emerge as both repellant and sympathetic characters. To their children they remain, determinedly, enigmas.

An absorbing, witty portrait of family in all its warts and warmth, Lively's latest will please her fans with its sharp characterizations and absorbing narrative path.

There are so many things one could say about Penelope Lively's Family Album. (For one, it has nothing to do with the book of the same title by Danielle Steel.) Here, I will quote a few: "a haunting new novel" (Dominique Brown, New York Times); "another winning demonstration of [Lively's] wit" (Ron Charles, Washington Post); "one of her most impressive works" (Joanna Briscoe, The Guardian).

To this could be added "thoroughly underwhelming," or -- perhaps less generously -- "a meandering tale lacking a protagonist, an antagonist, a plot, a progression, character development, and, while we're at it, a point." To varying degrees, completing the journey that is reading a book generally elicits the self-satisfaction of literary accomplishment; at the conclusion of Family Album, that feeling was something closer to relief.

To be fair, the story isn't awful, just repetitive and needlessly preoccupied with trifles. (Yes, trifles. If you're neither familiar with nor amused by English idioms, you've one more reason to cross this novel off the reading list. On the other hand, Lively appears to have appropriated a decent portion of vocabulary words from GRE prep courses. This would seem rather jejune if not for her literary fecundity.)

In a genuine attempt to cut the author some slack, I frequently reminded myself that there is much -- everything? -- about the intricacies of English middle-class existence about which I know nothing. (The term "Edwardian" is bandied about with alarming frequency, for example.) If that is the extent of it, then I apologize to Lively's loyal readers across the pond and respectfully retreat to lighter American fare. Perhaps Danielle Steel? The characters populating her Family Album are said to "face the greatest challenges and harshest test a family can endure, to emerge stronger, bound forever by loyalty and love." But then, those words were written by her publisher; and besides, as guilty pleasures go, I remain unwaveringly yours, John Grisham.

But I find it unlikely that cultural ignorance alone can explain the yawning gap between Family Album's aspirations and its reality. Maybe familial experience, then? I have as many siblings as Alison Harper has children (six), and perhaps that's just the problem: none of these dark, festering secrets and tensions strike me as extraordinary, or imbued with any larger meaning. Loud, rambunctious dinner conversations cut short by an ill-timed outburst? Self-imposed emotional detachment from the less pleasurable aspects of childhood? Par for the course, methinks. (Doesn't everyone do that?)

And now I'm starting to sound like Gina, the second child who, in an email to her siblings, agrees with her older brother that "all families screwed up, more or less." I just wish Penelope Lively's editor had kindly informed her of the same. Even the looming family secret, revealed midway through the book, is a letdown, almost a cliché as these things go, and both central and irrelevant to the story at the same time. Making matters worse is the grating redundancy; each sibling marvels, in a never-ending revolving door of memories, at how the formative years stubbornly retain their familiarity while growing increasingly foreign. The children themselves, from infancy through adulthood, are too numerous to animate with believable personalities, and so become terribly one-dimensional. Sandra can do nothing other than shop for clothes and look elegant. Paul must always drink heavily and display utter disregard for social etiquette. Clare just dances, and that is all. Even the interweaving style with which Lively travels through time and space to indulge her characters' collective nostalgia is arbitrary, with just enough proximity to Kazuo Ishiguro's similar tendencies to bring him to mind while silently reprimanding her for trying on his shoes.

There are, disappointments notwithstanding, some highlights amidst the unimpressive remainder. Strewn among the unremarkable hiccups of nostalgia are poignant touches that strike a chord with anyone who has grown up, left home, and returned, astonished at the changes. "Goodness," Katie exclaims in an email to her brother, Roger. "A married Gina, who'd have thought it." Similarly, towards the end, as Alison recounts the glory days of her motherhood at Allersmead, it would require an inhuman imperviousness to pain for the tragedy of her existence not to weigh heavily on the spirit of the reader. (And once again, specters of Ishiguro's Remains of the Day haunt Alison's pitifully denialist closing reflections.) It's just that the characters themselves seem to cope more serenely -- and authentically so -- with their upbringing than their creator does, and that, generally speaking, should not be the case. Chalk it up to big-family cynicism, but this is one family album I won't be flipping through again any time soon.

[...]

Six children, two parents and one nanny are all living together on a rambling British estate in the bucolic Thomas Hardy-esque countryside: nine different personalities and nine different ways of telling a story about one single family unit. FAMILY ALBUM illuminates the bold, forthright, secretive and sacred parts of life at Allersmead, where this clan has been seated throughout its entirety and the history that is about to change all their lives once it's revealed.

Penelope Lively is a lovely British author --- and by lovely, I mean she is gentle with a turn of phrase, elegant in her descriptions and pointed but diplomatic towards all her characters, regardless of whether or not they are behaving themselves. Beginning at a later family get-together in which the eldest, Paul --- who has returned to the roost to work at a local garden center after disastrous attempts at being a drugged-out loser and a willing suicide victim --- smashes Alison's Limoges plates. As her complacent and seemingly zoned-out husband mutters dark words from one end of the table, Alison finds a way to overlook these sleights, these accidents, as she has spent decades overlooking everything from infidelity to drug use to bitter contempt and anger from any one of her offspring. And yet the entire book, mired as it could be in these nasty emotional climes, manages to move along in just the way you know Alison would like it to --- one thing leads pragmatically to another; one thought, one emotion, to another; one long elegant steppe of the little things that make up the larger family dynamic, years down the road.

Lively's style is masterful not only in its literary sophistication but in its pointed use of narrative variety in telling the story. We do eventually get to peek in on each of the family members, getting a sense of how much they knew about what family secret at a particular time and how these past indiscretions or episodes shape or continue to shape the protagonist at hand. When Sarah moves to Rome to design and flip apartments to the rich and richer, she realizes that Italy's intense dedication to the family as an unbreakable unit helps her remember exactly why she has no interest in creating one herself --- her memories of her mother as a self-righteous housemarm is almost despicable to her, so she cannot see herself in this light at all.

If there is a villain in the book, it would have to be Alison, the erstwhile career mom who tucked her offspring into this little place in order to keep them safe but control them as well. Lively does not make Alison the villain, but the secrets she kept and the choices she made reverberate in her children's lives in a way that they cannot help but express anger --- although they often express gratitude for her being there and for their general care as well. FAMILY ALBUM is a truly beautiful book about how the ways in which we grow up affect the ways in which we live as grown-ups. It is a classic story, told with great skill and emotion, that should find its way onto many award lists as we near the end of the year.

--- Reviewed by Jana Siciliano

All Alison, overweight and a bit frumpy, ever really wanted was to be a mother and have a big family. She got her wish when, pregnant, she married Charles, who wrote scholarly tomes and locked himself in his study. Nevertheless they bought a run-down Edwardian mansion called Allersmead in rural England and proceeded to produce six children. Alison, a world-class cook, delighted in giving the children wonderful birthday parties on the sprawling Allersmead lawn, and elegant dinners for special occasions. Always there to lend a hand was Ingrid, the Scandinavean au pair, who was much more than a servant, yet not quite part of the family. On the surface it seemed an ideal existence for the children, almost blissful--but was it really? From the oldest Paul, who never quite found himself, to the youngest Clare, who had Ingrid's blond hair, they realize things are not quite as they seem. As they grow older they begin to question and as secrets are revealed, each child, now an adult, is profoundly affected when they learn the truth.

Penelope Lively is a master of misdirection. Family Album tells the story of a family that includes six children, in which the house they grow up in is as much a character as any of the humans. The narrative is supplied by each family member as well as others close to them, rendering each as a distinct personality, transitioning between past and present smoothly and distinctly. Information is hinted at, revealed sparingly and all in good time. Like every family that ever existed, this family harbors secrets, but it is not those secrets that are as important as the motivation behind them and their ultimate effect on each member. Highly recommended.

What a wonderful novel. Every single detail is perfect, the story mysterious, the style restrained. This is a English Novel in the best sense of the term. A novel that must be read slowly. Highly recommend.

I absolutely loved this novel in every way. Lively is a master of the craft. The writing is stunning, the characters real and alive. So many small, fresh details that bring a character alive. I didn't want to finish this book it was such a wonderful read. Few authors are as perceptive and wise as Lively. The structure of the novel told in multiple points of view is perfect for the title, Family Album. Honestly, I have nothing negative to say. This book is a cherished gem in a year of disappointing reads from established writers.

Buy it and enjoy!