“But when you are eighteen – or twenty-three – it is inconceivable that the choices you make must be worn like albatrosses around your neck for the rest of your life. And when you are forty-two it seems the ultimate malevolence that one should have been faced with those choices at the point in life when most of us are least equipped to make them.”

Protagonist Anne Linton lives in Cuxing with her husband and two children. She travels regularly to Lichfield, where her widowed father is in a nursing home. During these trips, Anne learns one of her father’s secrets, which changes her perception of her past, and finds an unexpected relationship, which changes her perception of her present (specifically, her marriage). She loses her job as a history teacher and becomes involved in a local effort to save a historically significant cottage.

It is hard to describe the impact of this book in a few sentences. It is slow in developing, and I was not sure where it was headed, but once I finished, I felt like I “got it.” This book examines a person’s history, of the passage of time, and memories, and how these elements impact one’s perceptions of life. The tone is quiet and contemplative. The characters are well developed and easy to picture.

If you enjoy “slice of life” books, you will find much to appreciate in this one. Lively’s writing style is delightful. I had previously read How It All Began, which I very much enjoyed, and plan to read more of her works.

“Oh, the past is disagreeable all right, she thought, no wonder we'd rather not know. And it has this way of jumping out at you from behind corners when you're least expecting it, so that you have to spend time and energy readjusting to it, redigesting it. Or it hangs around your neck like an albatross, so that there is no putting it aside ever, even if you wanted to.”
( )

I think this novel suffers a little from the attempt to draw out a vague theme. That theme seems to be the sense of uncertainty brought on by the passage of time. Points of view will alter; what once were certainties fragment, often with no resolution.
These themes are examined by a middle class woman who travels regularly on the same road to visit a dying father in Lichfield. This episode impacts on her perceptions of a rather tiresome marriage, once she discovers her father had a mistress, and she has a brief affair with another married man on her away visits to attend to her father.
She adjusts her points of view over the course of the novel and embarks on changes in life, seeing them as inevitable, unreliable, yet constant.

Too depressing. ( )

Clearly a "first novel." Ms. Lively improves, as time passes. One can feel her talent and sensitivity to domestic moments in this one, but "Passing On," the only other one of hers I've read so far, is more sophisticated, more focused, better paced, and more involving. ( )

Perfect novels, all of them. Just perfect. ( )