CONSEQUENCES
Penelope Lively
Penguin
Fiction
Hardcover: 0670038563
Paperback: 9780143113430

You can almost smell the wood smoke and taste the tea and biscuits in Penelope Lively's CONSEQUENCES, so eloquent and emotionally direct are all its elements. The characters, the prose, and the tragic but uplifting story of three generations of women --- from World War II to the present in a Britain that continues to redefine itself --- is a wonderful literary achievement.

The story begins with Lorna and Matt, a rich, sensible girl who has grown up with all the privileges of polite society and a Welsh man whose country upbringing somehow has led him to London to study art. A chance meeting on a park bench brings them together, and against all odds and the fears of their parents, they forge a life in the country. This turns out to be an idyll, regardless of the fact that they have no running water or the other amenities they're both used to. Their adventure in the country proves to be inspiring for Matt and happy for Lorna.

But as the specter of World War II sounds its sirens across the beautiful landscape, Matt and Lorna bring a baby, Molly, into their midst. Suddenly, the three of them are a family in crisis. Matt is shipped off to war and tragedy ensues. Molly is eventually left living with a kindly stepfather and making her own way into the world. So we follow her into the madness that is postwar England. Her own encounter with a wealthy older man from London leads her into the modern-day world. Molly's own daughter, saddled with the echoes of regret and sadness that have shaped the lives of her family's women, goes back to those halcyon days of her grandmother's early marriage to try to resolve the conflicts and emotional baggage that bogs down the three generations throughout the turbulent eras in which they spread out.

Penelope Lively is a thoroughly modern writer, but the memories of England's great catastrophes are reflected quite surely in the stories of these three fully-fleshed characters and the men who surround them. CONSEQUENCES shares some of its tragic whimsy with great works like Noel Coward's BRIEF ENCOUNTER and THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA by C.S. Lewis, literary masterpieces that employed the backdrop of the war to put the history of their beloved country into a new context, using love and fantasy as the ramps. The book speaks to any generation plagued by war and conflict, and surely deserves an audience today that can relate to its heartrending twists and turns.

As love hurtles these women into new lives filled with both hope and tragedy, so does CONSEQUENCES hurtle us into bright and shining hearts filled with the positive message that, even in bad times, life can go on --- and smashingly so.

    --- Reviewed by Jana Siciliano

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