She’s already thinking about her next novel, the 84-year-old
Penelope Lively recently told a New York Times interviewer.
“I wouldn’t know what to do if I wasn’t writing,” she said.
“I’d feel very restless. I know if I start something new, I may never finish
it, but it’s what you do. A writer writes.”
And, boy, can she write. Prolific and critically praised,
Lively has published 24 novels and short story collections, 24 children’s
books, and several books of nonfiction. She captured the Booker Prize in 1987
for Moon Tiger and won the Carnegie
Medal for Children’s Literature (the equivalent of our Newbery award). With
such an impressive body of work, the British author could be forgiven if she
decided to give it a rest.
But no. The Purple
Swamp Hen and Other Stories appeared in May and shows Lively at the top of
her game.
The title story shows off Lively’s imaginative daring. Set
in 79 AD, the tale is told in the voice of the purple swamp hen, Porphyrio porphyrio, an inhabitant of a
fabulous tiled garden in Pompeii. In the mild climate, the wealthy householder
and his friends liked to be outdoors, and the swamp hen saw it all, heard it
all: “fornication, incest, rape, child abuse, grievous bodily harm.” As the
swamp hen recounts scenes of Bacchanalian excess and cruelty, a volcanic
eruption changes everything. The swamp hen calls to its mate to flee. And they
flew “Far, far. Away from the mountain until there was no more falling stuff,
and that terrible black cloud was distant…(We found)… a good marshy place,
where there was no garden, no fountain…but water, reeds, the kind of habitat
appropriate to Porphyrio porphryrio.”
After this exotic beginning, the following 14 stories focus
on contemporary, middle-class English people. But don’t expect warm and cozy tales. Lively
gives us sharply observed portraits of women and men in moments that reveal
their vanity, venality, or humanity. Or, usually, all three. And sly wit is a
constant.
Several stories explore couples grappling with the fraying
bonds of love and constancy. “The Third Wife” shows Lively’s penchant for dark
humor. A husband with a pattern of disappearing on his wives—usually with a
substantial amount of their money—gets his comeuppance in a most satisfactory
way, as wife # 3 beats him at his own game.
In “The Row,” the humor is gentler as the wife, post-argument,
summons her memories of all the men she could
have chosen. The wife muses, “The world is full of men—men of every size,
shape, persuasion, clever men, funny men, charming, potentially devoted
men…Several of the men she had missed out on gleamed at her, almost
perceptible—a smile of invitation, conspiratorial glances….All those…any of
those.. And she had him.” However, through
the morning, her reflections subtly shift to an appreciation of him, his
kindnesses, their shared memories.
Lively shows a deft touch in portraying older people,
especially women. Two stories show that “old dears” are in perfect possession
of their wit and observational acuity. In “Old as the Hills,” two rivals in
their 80s pretend to make nice over lunch, but soon spar over the recently
buried Hugh, husband, at different times, to both Jane and Celia. “Forty-two
years ago, you helped yourself to my husband,” Jane accuses Celia. “Absolutely.
I can’t deny that,” Celia responds. This has been a long time coming, Jane
muses. “Forty-two years. I have plenty to say. So has she. We get down to it.
At last—“
And get down to it they do. But as the restaurant empties
and people pass their table with an indulgent glance, Jane imagines them seeing
two elderly ladies happily chatting about old times.
Pauline, the 86-year-old protagonist in “A License to Kill,”
realizes that her caretaker Cally also thinks of her as an “old dear” as they
go about their shopping routine. As they pause for a tea break, Cally comments,
“I expect you were a teacher, Pauline, weren’t you?”
Pauline replies mildly, “No, dear, I was a spy.”
Well, that shuts down the conversation! But only briefly. “A
license to kill?” asks Cally, recalibrating her view of the old lady.
Pauline thinks, “Like onions…A person is. Layers. And you haven’t
a clue. You just look at the top. An old person ls just an old person, you
think.”
As a complaining customer causes the check-out line to back
up, Pauline thinks of her training days with MI5 and MI6: “You learned how to
strangle a person with the bare hands. I think I am about to exercise the skill
for only the second time.”
Almost every story captures a moment that reveals, or at
least hints at, a deeper, broader tale. All are a pleasure to savor, offering
wit and observation that feel absolutely true.
