Passing on [Paperback]

Penelope Lively (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 31, 2005

A domineering old woman dies in a Cotswold village. Her death "releases" her two middle-aged unmarried children - a spinster librarian and a nature-loving schoolmaster - to make their lives.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Greystones is a moldy, drafty house of no great distinction located in the equally nondescript English town of Spaxton. The domineering and cantankerous Dorothy Glover has finally passed away, leaving her middle-aged progeny, Helen and Edward, to examine their lives, both past and future. It's a subtle plot and one that does well with Lively's ( The Road to Lichfield ) gently assured style. By revealing developments through small details--the discarded dishrags that mark the beginning of a relationship and the glimpse of a watch that signals its end--she delicately delineates the impact of love, scandal and turmoil. On the rare occasion when Lively gives reign to sweeping statements, as when the dramatic Louise comments on motherhood ("At the moments you wish you were shot of the whole thing you know perfectly well that it's precisely because you couldn't endure to be without it, now you know about it, that you've got to go through all this"), her writing doesn't quite ring true. But such instances are rare in this consistently engrossing tale.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Having won both the Booker Prize (Moon Tiger, LJ 5/15/88) and the Carnegie Medal (The Ghost of Thomas Kempe, 1973), Lively has already proven herself to be one of Britain's finest authors. Passing On simply burnishes this reputation. Once again, she develops her favorite theme: the power of the past to control the present. In this case, the past is a malevolent mother who is being lowered into her grave at the beginning of the book. But if Helen and Edward, middle-aged brother and sister, think that their mother has lost her stranglehold on them by dying, they are wrong. Through Helen's intelligent perception we watch as she and Edward struggle valiantly to lead normal lives. Sheila Mitchell, a respected actress in British theater, television, and radio, reads the story with accomplished skill. As Mitchell lowers her voice slightly to become Edward or speaks softly as Helen, listeners will swear they are sitting with them at the kitchen table in that tomb of a house. In fact, the reading is so convincing that it seems almost like an invasion of privacy to be listening at all. Highly recommended.?Jo Carr, Sarasota, Fla.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd (March 31, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140119329
• ISBN-13: 978-0140119329
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #229,290 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Sins of the Mother, July 10, 2004

By 

prisrob "pris," (New England USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

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?
Can something be done, be retrieved of their lives. A poignant and personal look inside the minds and hearts of two people we come to care about. Penelope Lively has done it again! prisrob

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A very good read, June 22, 1998

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, July 8, 2004

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.