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Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Spiderweb by Penelope Lively Penelope Lively. Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. Penelope Lively , in full Dame Penelope Margaret Lively , original name Penelope Margaret Low , (born March 17, 1933, Cairo, Egypt), British writer of well-plotted novels and short stories that stress the significance of memory and historical continuity. After spending her childhood in Egypt, Lively was sent to London at the age of 12 when her parents were divorced. She graduated from St. Anne’s College, Oxford, in 1954. Her first book, the children’s novel Astercote (1970), about modern English villagers who fear a resurgence of medieval plague, was followed by more than 20 other novels for children, many of which were set in rural England, including the award-winning books The Ghost of Thomas Kempe (1973) and A Stitch in Time (1976). Lively’s passion for landscape gardening inspired her first work for adults, the nonfiction The Presence of the Past: An Introduction to Landscape History (1976). Her first adult novel, The Road to Lichfield (1977), in which past truths shift when viewed from a contemporary perspective, reflects her interest in history and in the kinds of evidence on which contemporary views of the past are based. Her other novels for adults included Treasures of Time (1979), which won the British National Book Award; Judgement Day (1980); Moon Tiger (1987; Booker Prize), based partly on her recollections of Egypt; Passing On (1989); City of the Mind (1991); and Cleopatra’s Sister (1993). Heat Wave (1996) is the story of the disintegration of a marriage, and a retired anthropologist reflects on her past in Spiderweb (1998). In The Photograph (2003) a man finds and investigates posthumous proof of his wife’s infidelity. While Oleander, Jacaranda (1994) is a memoir of Lively’s Egyptian childhood, Making It Up (2005) has been termed an “anti-memoir”: it is a series of narratives drawn from her own life that Lively rewrote so as to explore the manner in which her life might have differed had she made—or had forced on her—other choices. Life in the Garden (2017) was described as a “horticultural memoir.” Her novels during this time included Consequences (2007), which follows the lives of three generations of women; Family Album (2009); and How It All Began (2011). The Purple Swamp Hen, and Other Stories was published in 2016. Lively was made Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 2012. The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica This article was most recently revised and updated by Amy Tikkanen, Corrections Manager. Too close for comfort. If Penelope Lively was a short, dark-haired man with a plummy voice who smoked roll-ups, then perhaps she would get the attention she deserved. But despite regularly winning prestigious prizes and being the author of some of the best novels written in the past 30 years, she doesn't get the notice that the men of her generation do. And yet, her Booker prizewinning novel Moon Tiger was far superior to that other Booker prize winner (which contained very similar subject matter), Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient; her City of the Mind, meanwhile, explores the problems of urban life in a much more engaging fashion than Martin Amis's London Fields. But perhaps she prefers it this way. It means that she can get on with the business of writing without the distractions of drumming up publicity. Indeed, her writing seems to suffer when it becomes too concerned with the world of the media - her previous novel Heatwave was rather sterile because it depicted the arid folk who work in publishing. But her new novel, Spiderweb, finds Lively coming back to her home ground and, as a consequence, is a real return to form. As with Moon Tiger, her central protagonist is a highly intelligent, older woman who is haunted by her past. Stella Brentwood is a retired anthropologist who has grown up in a generation when women were expected to marry and settle down; but her profession, and her character, have meant that she has led the life of the wild and free. She has studied the social behaviour and organisation of the isolated villagers living in the Nile Delta, in Malta, Greece and a remote Orkney island. She has enchanted men along the way but never become tied to any of them. Now 65, Stella abandons her nomadic lifestyle and buys a home in Somerset, hoping to root herself in one place. But she soon discovers that it is impossible to keep the cool, detached distance from people that she has maintained for most of her adult life. People keep trying to lure her into their emotional 'spiderwebs': there's Richard, a former civil servant and widow of her best friend, who harbours a secret passion for her; there's Judith, a lesbian archaeologist, whose close friendship with Stella upsets Judith's lover; and, most unexpected of all, there is a troubled rural family whose proximity and psychotic tendencies present a hidden but menacing threat to Stella. The diversity of these characters is mirrored in the diversity of the prose: the novel is constantly shifting in register. Newspaper clippings, letters, diary entries and classified adverts are interspersed with novelistic scenes which are less lyrical and more starkly pessimistic than any of her previous fiction. But although her prose may have acquired a new spareness, Lively's obsession with memory remains. As she weaves in and out of past and present, readers will become ensnared by a novel that is itself something of a spider's web. Search AbeBooks. We're sorry; the page you requested could not be found. AbeBooks offers millions of new, used, rare and out-of-print books, as well as cheap textbooks from thousands of booksellers around the world. Shopping on AbeBooks is easy, safe and 100% secure - search for your book, purchase a copy via our secure checkout and the bookseller ships it straight to you. Search thousands of booksellers selling millions of new & used books. New & Used Books. New and used copies of new releases, best sellers and award winners. Save money with our huge selection. Rare & Out of Print Books. From scarce first editions to sought-after signatures, find an array of rare, valuable and highly collectible books. Textbooks. Catch a break with big discounts and fantastic deals on new and used textbooks. Mystica. Is it a Mystery then? Part of a series? Sounds very interesting. How lovely and restful to have an extra day off. I've always wanted to read one of Penelope Lively's books. Never could get pass three or four pages. Your review is so good I'm willing to make another try. Give the Man Booker Prize winner "Moon Tiger" a try. I don't know about others but I like it. How wonderful to have an extra holiday every month!! We don't have enough of them here in Canada :- ( I've always wanted to read this author so look forward to the other reviews as well. This sounds interesting. I have read 2 of her children's books but her adult books have always caught my interest. Spiderweb. Stella Brentwood has led an exotic life for a woman of her time. Her frivolous best friend at Oxford, Nadine, knew early what she wanted: marriage and children. Stella, too, has had her share of passion, but her work as an anthropologist – always the outsider, the observer, was her priority. Now she has decided to root herself in Somerset landscape. But she finds that village society in England is far more chaotic, more unpredictable, and even more cruel, than she has known before. And that she cannot – or will not – conform to its rules. Reviews. "She is a writer of great subtlety and understanding, and this is her best novel since Moon Tiger, which won the Booker Prize in 1987." Scotsman. "Evokes an escalating atmosphere of menace . Lively at her deceptively easy-to-read best." Daily Mail. ©2021 Penelope Lively. All Rights Reserved. Web Design by Priority Pixels..