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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Sins of the Mother,
By
This review is from: Passing On (Paperback)
Helen and Edward Glover have just buried their mother, Dorothy. Dorothy, the manipulative and domineering woman that she was, raised two meek children who did her bidding and one child, Suzanne who escaped her, but understood the life her siblings had led. Penelope Lively has once again written a wonderfully literate book of characters, showing their foibles, yet the allowing the mysteries of life to unfold in real drama.Helen and Edward live in a small town near the edge of Cotswold. Helen is 52 and a part-time librarian. Edward is 49 and a teacher at a girl's school. It appears that both of them have not made much of their life, under the eye of their mother who had a need to keep them under her thumb, while allowing them to think they were not worthy of much. They live in a large, unkempt home Greystones, and have a piece of land known as the Britches, which Edward keeps as an environmentally safe place. After their mother dies, she stays with them in picture and soul. It takes a while before either of them can talk about her. It is while Helen is cleaning her mother's room and then cleaning the entire house that she finds the "nasty" things her mother had done to keep her two children at home. In the meanwhile, Helen has blossomed and has become good friends their solicitor, Giles, She falls in love with this wily man and feels like a school girl again. Edward, in the meantime becomes more reserved and into himself. An incident occurs that rocks both of Helen's and Edward's lives. As it happens, Phil, their sister, Suzanne's son has moved in with them because he and his parents do not see eye to eye. Both Helen and Edward continue their daily life and seem to make a difference in Phil's life. Has Dorothy's death freed these two characters to pursue their own lives? Both Helen and Edward appear to be accepting what has been lost in their lives because of their mother and moving on to a new and better life. Their next door neighbor wants their land and will use every wily trick he can muster. Are Helen and Edward smart enough to rebuff this man? What would new found money do to their life? Penelope Lively has introduced us to two characters that move our hearts and souls. She has been able to develop their personalities to such a degree that we can begin to understand how Dorothy, the mother has taken over their very thought and desires. How to break free of this tragic creature?
14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A very good read,
By Claude Rawlings (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Passing On (Paperback)
I am amazed that this book is out of print, because it is a very entertaining and readable novel by a writer who consistently provides a good read. I recently came upon an English paperback copy of it in an English-language bookstore in Paris, and I found it to be one of this writer's better novels. It concerns the lives of a sister and brother after the death of their old dragon of a mother, with whom they had been living for most of their lives (they are both middle-aged). There are problems with the house and some adjacent property, as well as problems in new and old relationships, and Helen, the sister and the main character, realizes that the mother was even more awful that she had thought, and painfully also comes to realize her own connivance in the mother's viciousness and in her attempt to keep Helen and her brother under her thumb (even after death). Helen is a likable and admirable character, and one gets a good sense of what modern life is like in an English village.
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Powerful and Poignant,
By Wendy Kaplan (Houston) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Passing On (Paperback)
Only an author of Penelope Lively's talent could present a story of two diffident, almost invisibly shy middle-aged people and make the reader not only care about them, but care deeply.On the surface, nothing whatsoever happens in the very quiet country lives of Helen and Edward, a brother and sister caught in a time warp of old-fashioned Victorianism smack in the middle of the teeming 80s (when this book was written). Having lost their domineering old battle-axe of a mother as the book begins, both brother and sister are having trouble banishing her critical and strident voice from each of their minds. As they go about their days--Helen as a part-time librarian, Edward as a schoolteacher--the reader senses that something horrific is about to happen. The very stillness of their lives portends something awful. It is the genius of the author that can portray that feeling without in any way discussing it or warning the reader...it's just there. And when it happens, lives are shattered, and the reader simply must weep. This is a tour de force. A brilliant piece of writing. And something that cannot be put down and forgotten.
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