Moon Tiger

[David]

Moon Tiger - Penelope Lively

Couldn't find the lost thread, which I'd started shortly before BGO ground zero, so I'll just start it again.

Claudia Hampton is an eminent historian in hospital, slowly dying. While in bed she determines to write her History of the World and the course of the novel cleverly interweaves her reflections on history (Lively studied the subject at Oxford) with her own life, from childhood to the present.

Claudia is a great character: highly intelligent, but with a considerably acerbic streak that sees extremely humorous rants about such characters as her insipid sister-in-law or even her own daughter. Her life has been vivid, troubled, successful and also fractured, as we find when the explorations of her past finally reach wartime experiences in Egypt, where she met the one true love of her life, Tom.

In the spirit of the objective historian, Claudia permits other voices into her narrative to balance her inevitable subjectivity. This produces fascinating turns as incidents are repeated in subtly altered experiences of deja vu on our part, with an event becoming crucially altered in impact because of a slight change of detail in another's recollection.

This makes for a richly complicated text with jumps between Claudia's past and present, world history and her own, and between different narrative viewpoints, yet it is never confusing, which is testament to Lively's powerful authorial control. It is witty, thoughtful, challenging, moving and highly rewarding. It's always surprised me that virtually no one to whom I talk about books has ever read it. Perhaps because they associate Lively with children's books, but this is very far from being one of those. It also won the Booker Prize in the late Eighties, but don't let that put you off!

I remember from the original post that Hazel replied to curse me for causing her to put yet another book on the TBR pile. That's a curse I can live with! ;)

[Viccie]

I was lent this book by my mother when it first came out and didn't fancy it so the paperback has lingered in my TBR bookcase for 17 years or so before I picked it up and began to wonder from about the second page why on earth it had taken me so long to read it.

It hadn't occured to me David that Claudia was allowing other voices in to tell part of her story to counterbalance her own subjectivity, I thought that Penelope Lively was having enormous fun breaking every writing rule of fiction in the book - head hopping from one point of view to the other, scene jumping, going backwards and forwards in time, the convenient inclusion of some background material right near the end, even introducing a new, unexpected and not strictly necessary charecter near the end and it all worked gloriously well showing what a dazzlingly accomplished writer she is.

I finished this book several days ago and can't stop thinking about it. A superb read.

BY the way shouldn't this be in 20th century fiction not 21st?

[David]

BY the way shouldn't this be in 20th century fiction not 21st?
It most certainly should! Not sure why I put it in the 21st, especially since I read it in the nineties.

[jfp]

[...]incidents are repeated in subtly altered experiences of deja vu on our part, with an event becoming crucially altered in impact because of a slight change of detail in another's recollection.

This makes for a richly complicated text [...]
David, you have consummately summarised what makes this in my recollection such a consummately brilliant novel.

The real masters of polyphonic narrative are the ones that subtly bring out the discrepancies...

And then Claudia's trenchant wielding of irony is totally delicious: Of course, intelligence is always a disadvantage. Parental hearts should sink at the first signs of it. It was an immense relief to me to observe that Lisa's was merely average.

[Jenmcd]

I picked Moon Tiger off the TBR pile on Friday as I wanted something quick to read before I got stuck in to a library book. Little did I know I would be in for such a treat.

The protagonist, Claudia Hampton, is in hospital dying. She tells her nurses that she is writing a history of the world. She has lived an eventful life as a historian and journalist and proceeds to tell her life story, with frequent asides giving her take on historical events. The narrative shifts between different voices - Claudia's, an unseen narrator and significant people in Claudia's life.

At first Claudia comes across as a bit of a monster, but her character develops slowly through the course of the book so my final impression was completely different to my first, although you don't forget her flaws.

This book combines three things that I always love in any book - history, exotic locations and an interesting woman's life story. It all adds up to a fantastic novel which won the Booker in 1987. I cannot recommend this highly enough.

[megustaleer]

Moon Tiger was the BGO Bookgroup Summer Read 2010.
Discussion here. (http://www.bookgrouponline.com/forum/showthread.html?t=7562)