Customer Reviews

Making It Up

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"This book is fiction. If anything, it is an anti-memoir. My own life serves as a prompt; an exercise in confabulation."

Author, Penelope Lively states this in the preface to her new novel, Making It Up, a gorgeously evocative and eloquently written work of fiction that uses the pathways of Lively's own life as a stopping off point, those routes she never took, those twists of fate that never kinked. Have any of us ever wondered "what if?" What if I hadn't got on that plane, or hooked up with person, or taken that job...

Penelope Lively imagines what her life would have been like, if during the 2nd World War, as a child, she had left Cairo for Cape Town instead of escaping to Palestine; as a young girl became an archeologist and worked on digs in the English countryside, married an American academic and migrated to New England, or even found that her husband was being posted to the Far East during the Korean War.

Through short fictional narratives, complete with a small prologue indicating the route that she really took, Lively weaves a beguiling tale of shipwrecks and plane crashes, family reunions, and violence amidst the heady and giddy battles of war. The eight brief vignettes are made to take quite a heavy weight: a burden of regret, curiosity, anger, and conjecture at the imponderable workings of fate.

The stories are all incredibly varied and idiosyncratic, and indeed most could be made into fully-fledged novels. The first story, The Mozambique Channel opens in pre-Alamein Egypt. Shirley is an English nanny living in Cairo who just can't remember England very well. With the Germans advancing, the family she is minding are horded onto a liner bound of Cape Town. While in transit, her first love affair is mired by the death of her six-year-old charge on the torpedoed ship.

The Albert Hall tells of a woman called Chloe battling to shake the values of her counterculture mother Miranda, who grew up rebelling against the social mores of the fifties. Chloe is now the sweet voice of reason, whilst Miranda continues to be the force of anarchy. Mother and daughter clash, with Chloe regarding her mother as obviously eccentric but also simply part of life's complexity. Although mildly irritated by her, she sees her as essentially, the crucial directive element in her own struggle for fulfillment.

Told from the point of view of Alice, a young apprentice archaeologist, The Temple of Mithras takes place on an early 1970s archaeological dig thrown into crisis by the professor's absconding wife. Alice, who "feels as though she has been born into a generation that will see the end of the world," becomes distracted by the sexual politics of her fellow students.

Alice is constantly preoccupied about the threat of nuclear annihilation and talks about "we who love at the end of time." Her conflict comes because she's not particularly interested in archeology, with some basic instinct for self-preservation telling her that this is not for her. "The future seems like some impenetrable fog into which you are required to plunge, blindly forging ahead in some direction that leads to goodness knows where."

Perhaps the most affecting story is Transatlantic, which brings Carol, a middle-aged Englishwoman and Ben, her American husband to England to visit her elderly and snobbish aunt Margaret, "her house sunk amidst fields and deep lanes," at the time of the Falklands War. The husband is a liberal economist, while Aunt Margaret and Uncle Clive a pair of unrepentant Thatcher-loving, socialist bashers. For Carol this is the first trip to England in 18 months since her mother died, "the first in which she had no parent to visit on anchor."

By placing her alternate self in various times and places throughout the twentieth century, Lively manages to explore the often-mysterious dichotomy between fiction and life. For the author, fiction is about choices, moving characters in one direction or another, down exactly the right paths avoiding dead ends, the unsatisfactory turns. Life however, is totally different - chaotic, haphazard, lurching from one decision to another.

Sharp, perceptive and often very witty, Lively has written a group of cautionary tales about what might have happened if her life had have worked out differently, if she had taken those different paths. The author's ability to create such a vivid alternative reality is just so refreshing, which is one of the reasons why this book is such a delight to read. Mike Leonard October 05.

4.5 stars

"Somehow, choice and contingency have landed you where you are, as a person that you are, and the whole process seems so precarious that you look back at those climatic moments when things might have gone entirely differently, when life might have spun off in some other direction, and wonder at this apparently arbitrary outcome." so says Penelope Lively as she begins to give us a feel for this new novel.

Penelope Lively begins with an introduction to the real circumstances, and ends with an afterward as to the actual outcome. She surmises some directing factor in her childhood that has been constant in her life - that she was programmed to become addicted to reading and writing, to prefer thoughtful, argumentative men and to want children. Unlike her mother who was happy enough to give complete custody to her father during their divorce when Penelope was 12.

'What If' she had made other choices: what if she hadn't escaped from Alexandria at the outbreak of WWII? Penelope Lively's first chapter describes an escape by boat to Capetown as a small child and the resultant changes.

'What If' she had gone to the Arts Ball with an older man dressed in jeans and shirt as a heady rite of passage - but suppose, in those pre-pill days, she had become pregnant, and faced social disgrace as a single mother, or death through a backstreet abortion.

'What If' she was a student on an archaeological dig and didn't believe she would live long because of the threat of the "bomb' in the 1970's. Is this comparable to the threat we feel today of the "bomb"?

'What If" she had not met the Englishman who became her beloved husband, but instead went on to postgraduate school in America and married an American?

'What If', her writing had not been appreciated and her writings had not become novels? Penelope Lively was a lonely child and delved into reading which brought her to her writing.

Penelope Lively goes on "When you're making climactic decisions, they do all cluster in younger life. Most of my crucial decisions seem to have been taken before the age of 25," she reflects. "I have always been fascinated by the business of choice and contingency, the way in which we think we make choices but we're directed by contingent events, from the little things like the car that won't start, to the large directives of history. Choice and contingency land you where you are, and the whole process seems so precarious, you look back at those moments when things might have gone entirely differently, when life might have spun off in some other direction."

This book is everybody's daydreams made real. What might have been. Not my favorite Penelope Lively novel, but then, 'What If'.. Highly Recommended. prisrob

A full life contains millions of choices; some are inconsequential, others have the power to change everything, and sometimes only time and distance show the true impact. In her new book, Penelope Lively examines some of the choices that molded her own life and wonders what would have happened had these choices gone another way. If her mother had chosen to flee Egypt for South Africa instead of Palestine during World War II, would they have survived the trip as so many did not? If she had children at a younger age, married someone else, and pursued a different career, what would have happened?

Spanning the years from Word War II to the 1970s, the period of Lively's youth and young adulthood, MAKING IT UP emphasizes the precarious nature of those years, personally and culturally, and how choices made casually colored everything that followed them.

The theme of alternative endings and the time period will remind many readers of Ian McEwan's ATONEMENT. A crucial difference is that ATONEMENT's narrator wishes for a different ending for other characters; Lively's exercise is focused entirely on her own choices. Also, she seems happy with the choices she made, giving the stories in MAKING IT UP a sense of averted crises rather than of destinies unfulfilled.

However, if this book is lighter and more personal, the reader must be impressed with Lively's gifts as a novelist. It seems like she can make a story out of practically anything that has happened to her. She's so empathetic with her characters; she captures her era so well and draws her readers in so easily that each story is entertaining and meaningful.

This is the greatest strength as well as the greatest frustration of MAKING IT UP. The stories feel like the beginnings of novels, but they don't go anywhere and they do not connect with one another. "I should write not one book but hundreds; I should pursue each idiosyncratic path. Not an option, clearly, and to follow a single outcome seemed like a constriction..." But the path is only a path; as it is unchosen, there is no destination.

MAKING IT UP is a good companion to Lively's earlier book, THE PHOTOGRAPH, in which a collection of objects in an English country house illustrate early and mid-twentieth century British culture through the stories of how these objects came to reside there.

--- Reviewed by Colleen Quinn ([...])

Penelope Lively asks herself the hard questions, like, what if I hadn't grown up in Egypt? Each of the stories here in this collection is prefaced by a bit of autobiography, the sort of thing that the Booker Prize winning novelist (author of MOON TIGER), who has so often been interviewed, could recite in her sleep. Then comes the story and we, the readers, note how different the story is from the minutiae--often tedious--we have just been fed about her real life. After the story, Lively provides another wrap-up to drive the point home. And then she has the gall to present this ragtag bag of remnants as some kind of Flaubertian "art of fiction" meditation.

It isn't working for me, I'm afraid. It seems plain as a pikestaff that she must have written these stories over many years, and then she gussied them up to fit the demands of her publisher. She's already written two volumes terrific autobiography, JACARANDA and A HOUSE UNLOCKED, childhood memoirs that shade into young adulthood and the intimations of mortality (she was born in 1933). We're basically reading the same thing over again, because you can say one thing for Penelope Lively, she just can't let go. "To write fiction," she hints, "is to make a succession of choices, to send the narrative and the characters in one direction rather than another. Story is navigation: successful story is the triumphant progress down exactly the right paths, avoiding the dead ends, the unsatisfactory turns. Life, of course, is not at all like that."

She's no stylist, but she manages to get this point across at least 45 times that I counted in this rambling book of might-have-beens. Someone close to her might have sat her down at some point and asked her, do you really want to do this, Miss Lively? All of her gifts are on display--that's the saving grace of this book--including her wonderful sense of humor about herself. "When I was nine," she confesses, "I identified with Penelope because my mind was happy to confuse fact with fiction--and what was she doing with my name, anyway, if she was not some form of myself?" A rueful chuckle pervades tbis bewilderingly mediocre volume, but it is one that Lively enthusiasts will cherish for sure.

Ms. Lively's premise intrigued me but ended up not impressing me. It ended up seeming more a self-indulgent exercise for the author and always validating the choice she actually made. I found the storytelling mild-mannered and stopped before making a definite point. I did like the story of the old woman in the historic house full of books and the woman who discovered what happened to the half-sister she never met.

I can relate to the author's fantasizing about "what it's". This was such a fun premise for a book! She writes about several different scenarios that might have happened if she , or her parents had made a different choice....taken a different path. A quick and enjoyable read.

Lively executes a nice idea in her typically professional fashion.

She has always been able to draw on events and issues in her own life to create stories, but here she deliberately makes this more personal. It's like an alternative autobiography: she experiments by looking at some key 'Sliding Door' alternatives, musing on what might have easily been her personal history if the chips had have fallen ever so slightly differently. She also steps in at the end of each story to explain the context, giving a little information on what actually happened in her life to illustrate something of the writing process for her - the mix of fact with fiction, how reality is a resource and launching point for invention.

Each vignette is capably painted with authentic characters and settings, and satisfying story arcs. I'm tempted to give it a higher rating, but this is one of those books that is undeniably good, but not particularly good for me. Perhaps there's a control, a detachment, a reserve in Lively herself that fails to really engage me? Her musing is deftly executed, but, I suppose, all just a little low key for me. Books of hers that I have particularly enjoyed (Passing On, Moon Tiger, Heat Wave, Judgement Day) probably have more licence, moving around events that are a bit more sensational or potent.

But if you feel like musing, go for it - Lively is very good.

In Making It Up, British author Penelope Lively's self-labeled "anti-memoir" is a collection of eight short stories prompted by actual events that the author herself experienced or was aware of. The stories are derived from the "What If's", or slight alterations of reality that Lively uses to inspire each story. She begins and concludes each story with acknowledgements that explain how the fictional elements were derived, and reveals the story's plausibility by exposing the historical context, real life events, and the people who provide its foundation in reality.

By including the explanatory narrative between the stories, Lively openly demonstrates how she works within the context of reality to create fictional tales that might have been real had fate and circumstances been slightly altered. The stories are bound together around the premise that there are pivotal moments in a person's life that could be forever altered by minor decisions or choices that are made:

"Somehow, choice and contingency have landed you where you are, as a person that you are, and the whole process seems so precarious that you look back at those climatic moments when things might have gone entirely differently, when life might have spun off in some other direction, and wonder at this apparently arbitrary outcome." (p.37)

In The Mozambique Channel, Lively tells the story of Shirley Manners, the nanny who is doomed to tragedy on a ship bound for South Africa with her host family while fleeing the 1942 German invasion of Egypt. In her closing acknowledgements to the story, Lively notes the historical basis of the fiction - the fact that twenty allied ships were sunk by Japanese U-Boats active in the Mozambique Channel during the summer of 1942. She also notes that it was possible that one of the sunken ships might have been carrying British civilians bound for South Africa. By exploring how her own fate may have been changed had her mother chosen a ship headed for South Africa instead of Palestine, she crafts a compelling story of passion, devotion and ultimate tragedy - a story that never happened, but could have.

In The Albert Hall and The Temple of Mithras, Lively creates alter egos for herself in the characters of Miranda, the free spirited and impractical mother of Chloe, who becomes almost defiantly pragmatic by contrast; and in Penny Sampson, the disconcerted wife of an esteemed archaeologist. Through the emotions and motivations of these characters, Lively masterfully demonstrates the impact that those closest to us can have on our own lives. In The Battle of Imjin River, she explores how public events intertwine with and affect our private lives, and how her own fate would have changed had her husband fought and died in the battle. In Transatlantic, she invents Carol, an alter-ego who has shed her Englishness and her very identity when she chooses to spend her life across the Atlantic, only to be confronted with the extent of her metamorphosis during a trip back to England. In Comet, Lively explores what life might have been like for a fictional half-sister named Sarah if she herself had been killed in a 1950s plane crash, and how the experience might have ironically led Sarah to find true love.

Within each story, Lively limits the characters and events within the realm of what is possible in the characters' respective worlds, but absolves them from the chaos and confusion that is a by-product of reality. As she points out:

"To write fiction is to make a succession of choices, to send the narrative and the characters in one direction rather than another. Story is navigation: successful story is the triumphant progress down exactly the right paths, avoiding the dead ends, the unsatisfactory turns. Life, of course, is not at all like that." (p.112)

The value of the collection lies not only in Lively's intellectual exploration of the "road not taken", but also has significant merit as an expositional guidebook for those interested in a master author's process for creating believable fiction. Lively's craft is demonstrated, not counseled, throughout each story. In her summary narratives, Lively explains how she injects twists of fate into her real life memoir to prompt the hypothetically-based short stories, which showcase her masterful control over the destiny of her characters and expose the narrow but important divide between reality and fiction.

-Corinna W. Caudill, UK

Lively generalizes the meaning of "confabulation" to include imagining alternative life stories, the road not taken, at various turning points in her life. Surprisingly, in these stories "her" character is never the main character, and represents her only in terms of some biographical facts, not personality. There is a forward and afterword for each story, and this is what I found most interesting. The stories themselves were never dull, but the writing was not particularly inspired. The story which most touched me was "Comet", about the half-sister who died in a plane crash: very romantic. While I have read and enjoyed some of the Lively novels, based on "Making It Up" I am most motivated to read Lively's "A House Unlocked" as it is a mixture of autobiography and social history.

Now, this type of writing is what I have been calling the new 'history writing,' based on an actual event but elabored on so that you can't tell what is truth and what is made up. Her title says it all. She admits "my life serves as the prompt; in psychiatric terminology, [confabulation] refers to the creation of imaginary remembered experiences which replace the gaps left by disorders of the memory." That is exactly what the internet bully Mary A. is getting away with with the help of Chad G., a censor. It is okay to badger and harrass another reviewer as long as it is kept within the book study and not against the book itself, a travesty. What is this world coming to?

When she was young, she made up stories to get through an isolated childhood, "long satisfying narratives that passed the time and spiced up otherwise uneventful days." She lived in Egypt in the 1940s and starts out: "My childhood was spent in a garden....a few miles outside Cairo. I had been born in Egypt and knew nowhere else; England was a vague memory." And so, she made up a fantasy life and thinks back now to what might have been; "a contingency landed you where you are, as the person you are, and the whole process seems so precarious that you look back at those climactic moments when things might have gone entirely differently, when life might have gone in another direction, and wonder at this apparently arbitrary outcome."

This is what she has done in this book she calls an "anti-memoir," used the eventful times of her real life to think back on how things might or could have been. It may not be a novel idea but it works in this context: "I came to England at the age of twelve. I had spent my childhood in the polyglot and cosmopolitan ambience of Cairo." In England, as most children do, she endured an education in a boarding school. She reminisces about going to a dance at Albert Hall with an older man: "I am eighteen, so perhaps I am grown up. I am in love with the man who has brought me here...he is thirty; I am besotted with his sophistication, his assurance, his flattering attention. We dance and sometime in the small hours we leave for his flat. There is only one way in which this night can end."

After marriage and two children, she thinks back on that glorious night: "I have had two children; they have been the light of my life. But what about the children who never were? One such must hover there in Albert Hall, a person who might have been the product of that night. In those pre-pill days, girls diced with death (going to abortionists). In 1951, those who got "caught" were discreetly tucked away, or faced it out in defiance of the prevailing mores, depending on the circumstances. For me, the night of the Ball was just a heady rite of passage, but suppose it had been otherwise?"

In the Preface, she contemplates, "novelists have absolute control over their material, while real life is quite out of control." For many years, she has used fiction as a form to air her stories. Now, "at the other end of life, storytelling is an ingrained habit; I wouldn't know what else to do." She has written two autobiographies, OLEANDER, JACARANDA: A CHILDHOOD PERCEIVED and A HOUSE UNLOCKED. She concludes: "I have lived in a century of mass migration, the time when millions slipped from one culture into another, were born with one identity and died as someone else. Today, I am a Londoner. Cities absorb; new arrivals creep into cracks and crevices. They reinvent themselves and the place. I look at the faces of the city's migrants which reflect other worlds, and wonder if I could have done that." She certainly shows that she has an extensive imagination and uses it to the ultimate in this clever book.