"Nobody writes more astutely or affectingly about [love]... than Penelope Lively." -- The Washington Post
An intelligent examination of alternative destinies, choices and the moments in our lives when we could have chosen a different path, from Booker Prize-winning author Penelope Lively
In this fascinating piece of fiction, Penelope Lively takes moments from her own life and asks 'what if' she had made other choices: what if she hadn't escaped from Alexandria at the outbreak of WWII? What would her life have been like if she had become pregnant when she was 18? If she had married someone else? If she taken a different job? If she had lived her life abroad? These stories offer a sublime dance between realityand imaganation, inviting the reader to ask similar questions.
"Nobody writes more astutely or affectingly about [love]... than Penelope Lively." --Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post
"Making It Up display[s] Lively's incisive prose style, her wit, and, above all, her agile imagination." -- Entertainment Weekly
"[A] highly original form of fictional autobiography as well as a fascinating insight into the seemingly random nature of destiny" -- Daily Mail (UK)
"[Lively's] writing has always tackled deep questions of identity, memory, love and loss . . . These elegant 'confabulations', as she calls them, allow Lively's talents full range. Intelligent, limpidly well-written and full of human understanding, they evoke the times she has seen and the richness of other lives as well as her own." -- Sunday Telegraph (UK)
"Nobody writes more astutely or affectingly about [love]... than Penelope Lively." -- The Washington Post
An intelligent examination of alternative destinies, choices and the moments in our lives when we could have chosen a different path, from Booker Prize-winning author Penelope Lively
In this fascinating piece of fiction, Penelope Lively takes moments from her own life and asks 'what if' she had made other choices: what if she hadn't escaped from Alexandria at the outbreak of WWII? What would her life have been like if she had become pregnant when she was 18? If she had married someone else? If she taken a different job? If she had lived her life abroad? These stories offer a sublime dance between realityand imaganation, inviting the reader to ask similar questions.
Praise
"Nobody writes more astutely or affectingly about [love]... than Penelope Lively." --Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post
"Making It Up display[s] Lively's incisive prose style, her wit, and, above all, her agile imagination." -- Entertainment Weekly
"[A] highly original form of fictional autobiography as well as a fascinating insight into the seemingly random nature of destiny" -- Daily Mail (UK)
"[Lively's] writing has always tackled deep questions of identity, memory, love and loss . . . These elegant 'confabulations', as she calls them, allow Lively's talents full range. Intelligent, limpidly well-written and full of human understanding, they evoke the times she has seen and the richness of other lives as well as her own." -- Sunday Telegraph (UK)
