FREE MOON TIGER PDF Penelope Lively,Anthony Thwaite | 224 pages | 12 Sep 2009 | Penguin Books Ltd | 9780141188317 | English | London, United Kingdom Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively A modern alternative to Moon Tiger and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality study guides that feature detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, quotes, and essay topics. Moon Tiger Penelope Lively. Transform this Plot Summary Moon Tiger a Study Guide. Using multiple points of view all stemming from the overarching narrator, Lively tells a life story that is also a history of the world as well as an exploration of how we know things, how Moon Tiger is validated Moon Tiger passed down, and the role of our own Moon Tiger in determining what is true and what is fiction, what is Moon Tiger and what is opinion, and how our own thoughts and psychology shape the way we present history—and how that shaping actually changes history. The narrative switches to a first-person account from Claudia Hampton, who emphasizes that she is, in fact, Moon Tiger to create a history of the world, and in the process provide a personal history as well. Claudia offers her backstory in pieces throughout the novel: She is seventy-six years old, she is dying of cancer, she is a writer and historian. Her story begins with her dim memories of her father, who died in World War I when she was very small, Moon Tiger then jumps to her memory of being Moon Tiger years old and competing with her brother Gordon to see who could collect the Moon Tiger fossils on a beach. Claudia switches between directly addressing the reader and speaking about herself in the third-person, sowing some subtle confusion as to who, exactly, is narrating the third-person sections. Claudia thinks of her daughter, Lisa, whom she describes as dull. Claudia describes the private thoughts of Jasper as if she were privy to them, hinting at an element of the unreliable in her story. She then has a lengthy reflection on the nature of historical figures, imagining the titans of history doing mundane, everyday Moon Tiger that Moon Tiger left out of the books. Claudia remembers a time when Lisa visited her Moon Tiger the Moon Tiger home, and she asked her daughter if she still attended church. Claudia considers the many ways Sasha has influenced her life, and how all those changes were the ripples of something incredibly unlikely. She describes Cairo as a place where time has no meaning, the ancient artifacts mixing with the modern day to blend everything together. This leads her to remember meeting Tom Southern in the desert outside Cairo. Tom is an English soldier on leave; they fall in love, but then Tom is called back to the front and killed. Claudia discovers she is pregnant by him and decides to keep the baby, but miscarries. Lisa visits her mother and thinks of her with disdain, believing her mother has never loved anyone. Claudia thinks back to her relationship with Gordon as they grew into adolescence, revealing that their intimacy and competitiveness stretched into physical intimacies as they engaged in an incestuous relationship. Claudia thinks about how her own body is a historical record of her life, how all her injuries and surgeries Moon Tiger recorded there. Claudia thinks about the Cold War and how her status as a mother inspired greater fear and terror in her despite Moon Tiger inability to express normal maternal love. She thinks back to a moment just two days before Gordon died, a few years before. Although their relationship was never the same after the war, his death left a huge gap in her life. Claudia receives a batch of papers at the nursing home, among them the diary of Tom Southern. His diary is an examination of fear and war; Claudia dominates his thoughts. She thinks he would be disgusted by the person she has become. Moon Tiger: ferociously complicated – and fantastically readable | Penelope Lively | The Guardian I include this quote in case you were wondering about the title, and also because it suggests some of the appeal of Penelope Lively's Booker winner. Atmospheric enough in its own Moon Tiger, the image takes on more power when you know that this Moon Tiger comes into focus because it lies beside two lovers — Claudia and Tom — on one of their last snatched nights together in Cairo during the second world war. Tom is about to return to the frontline Moon Tiger and death — and the Moon Tiger have barely even had time to get to know each other. Moon Tiger coil burns away as Claudia tries to cement Tom in her mind and gets him to tell her his life story. Eventually, he comes to her. Please may it have a happy ending. The Moon Tiger is almost entirely burned away now; its green spiral is mirrored by an ash spiral in the saucer. I could go on, but you get the idea. Moon Tiger could also have Moon Tiger dozens of similarly potent images and extracted similar riches. Given a few more thousand words, Moon Tiger enjoy doing so. But for now, I should cut to the chase: Moon Tiger is one of the very best Booker winners. Few books I've read recently have given me so much pleasure. Or pain — this is literature of the first order, after all. The novel is so good that I was rather taken aback, especially since it hadn't drifted onto my radar before. Perhaps I'm being solipsistic and the book is actually discussed and praised as often as it ought to be, but I just haven't spotted it. Yet the fact remains that it wasn't in the running for the recent Best Of Booker award a gross oversight, given that mediocrities like The Ghost Road and Disgrace were. It's also notable that Moon Tiger plenty of the reviews I've found from recognise the novel's excellence, most of the broader press was distinctly condescending. The book sold well, but it was still considered an outsider and patronised Moon Tiger as "the housewife's choice". WI Webb in the Guardian, meanwhile, damned it with the faint praise of being "suitable for the Harrods and Hatchard's market". Aside from the whiff of sexism, to suggest the book is flowery and unchallenging is unjust. Moon Tiger is actually a singularly tough book. It doesn't flinch from unpleasantness including incest and death, random, sudden and prolonged ; it asks hard questions about memory and history and personal legacy; it's stylistically demanding and inventive. The latter virtue is particularly interesting. Lively presents her narrative in an unusual way, often teasing over the same scene several times from various characters' different viewpoints different both in terms of memory and original understanding Moon Tiger, as well as Moon Tiger of an apparently omniscient narrator. It sounds tricksy, but there's never a feeling that Lively is showing off. Her style never gets in the way, it simply deepens understanding and enjoyment while making pretty nifty points about human fallibility and the Moon Tiger of producing one true objective history of anything. The technique serves the story. And Moon Tiger this story that captivates. In Claudia Hampton, Lively has worked the impressive trick of creating a mean-spirited, selfish character with whom one can't help falling in love. We meet her as she lies dying and is occupying herself by composing a history of the world Moon Tiger her head — with herself as the heroine. Alongside virtuoso demonstrations of the coincidences and apparent malevolence of history like the fact that, thanks to the use of wampum as currency, "the hat worn under a rainy Middlesex sky should be a matter of life and death for sea-shells under the shallows of Cape Cod"we Moon Tiger Claudia crashing through the 20th century. She takes in the loss felt after the first world war, the exhilaration and horror of playing an active role in the second, the power and hilarious strangeness of the US afterwards and the decline and even more determined eccentricity of England. She does Moon Tiger with such style and brittle energy — and such disdainful amusement — that following Moon Tiger is a joy. Her victories are splendid even when she is being unspeakably cruel to lesser intellects such as her brother's bovine wife and her sorrows are always deeply felt. The central tragedy, we come to realise, is that she is moving so far away from the man she loved. Her attempts to narrow that gap of age and time produce descriptions of Egypt in that rival those in the Alexandria Quartet for vividness and power. And as in the Alexandria Quartet they also come suffused Moon Tiger such a deep sense of loss that reading becomes occasionally near- unbearable. The book only becomes harder Moon Tiger more affecting as the glorious Claudia declines to inevitable death. If this is the "housewives' choice", it proves only that housewives are made of stern stuff and shouldn't be underestimated. It would have been my choice too. It's a wonderful Moon Tiger. Topics Booker prize Booker club. Penelope Lively Fiction Moon Moon Tiger blogposts. Moon Tiger this content. Order by newest oldest recommendations. Show 25 Moon Tiger 50 All. Threads collapsed expanded unthreaded. Loading comments… Trouble loading? Most popular. BBC World Service - World Book Club, Penelope Lively - Moon Tiger Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read. Want to Read saving….