Moon Tiger

By Penelope Lively

“A powerful, moving and beautifully wrought novel about the ways in which lives are molded by personal memory and the collective past.” —The Boston Globe

Winner of the Man Booker Prize

Elderly, uncompromising Claudia Hampton lies in a London hospital bed with memories of life fluttering through her fading consciousness. An author of popular history, Claudia proclaims she’s carrying out her last project: a history of the world. This history turns out to be a mosaic of her life, her own story tangled with those of her brother, her lover and father of her daughter, and the center of her life, Tom, her one great love found and lost in war-torn Egypt. Always the independent woman, often with contentious relationships, Claudia’s personal history is complex and fascinating. As people visit Claudia, they shake and twist the mosaic, changing speed, movement, and voice, to reveal themselves and Claudia’s impact on their world.

“Emotionally, Moon Tiger is kaleidoscopic, deeply satisfying. The all too brief encounter between Claudia and Tom will surely rate as one of the most memorable of contemporary fictional affairs. This is one of the best novels I have read for years.” —The London Sunday Telegraph

“It pulls us in; it engages us and saddens us. It is also unexpectedly funny . . . It leaves its traces in the air long after you’ve put it away.” —The New York Times Book Review

“One of the very best Booker winners . . . it asks hard questions about memory and history and personal legacy; it’s stylistically demanding and inventive . . . a wonderful book.” —The Guardian

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Dec 1, 2007
• ISBN: 9780802197375

Penelope Lively

Penelope Lively is a novelist, short story writer and author of children's books. Her novels have won several literary awards including the Booker Prize for Moon Tiger in 1987, the Carnegie Medal for The Ghost of Thomas Kempe in 1973, and the Whitbread Award for A Stitch in Time in 1976.

Book preview

1

‘I’m writing a history of the world,’ she says. And the hands of the nurse are arrested for a moment; she looks down at this old woman, this old ill woman. ‘Well, my goodness,’ the nurse says. ‘That’s quite a thing to be doing, isn’t it?’ And then she becomes busy again, she heaves and tucks and smooths – ‘Upsy a bit, dear, that’s a good girl – then we’ll get you a cup of tea.’

A history of the world. To round things off. I may as well – no more nit-picking stuff about Napoleon, Tito, the battle of Edgehill, Hernando Cortez … The works, this time. The whole triumphant murderous unstoppable chute – from the mud to the stars, universal and particular, your story and mine. I’m equipped, I consider; eclecticism has always been my hallmark. That’s what they’ve said, though it has been given other names. Claudia Hampton’s range is ambitious, some might say imprudent: my enemies. Miss Hampton’s bold conceptual sweep: my friends.

A history of the world, yes. And in the process, my own. The Life and Times of Claudia H. The bit of the twentieth century to which I’ve been shackled, willy-nilly, like it or not. Let me contemplate myself within my context: everything and nothing. The history of the world as selected by Claudia: fact and fiction, myth and evidence, images and documents.

‘Was she someone?’ enquires the nurse. Her shoes squeak on the shiny floor; the doctor’s shoes crunch. ‘I mean, the things she comes out with …’ And the doctor glances at his notes and says that yes, she does seem to have been someone, evidently she’s written books and newspaper articles and … um … been in the Middle East at one time … typhoid, malaria … unmarried (one miscarriage, one child he sees but does not say) … yes, the records do suggest she was someone, probably.

There are plenty who would point to it as a typical presumption to align my own life with the history of the world. Let them. I’ve always had my followers, also. My readers know the story, of course. They know the general tendency. They know how it goes. I shall omit the narrative. What I shall do is flesh it out; give it life and colour, add the screams and the rhetoric. Oh, I shan’t spare them a thing. The question is, shall it or shall it not be linear history? I’ve always thought a kaleidoscopic view might be an interesting heresy. Shake the tube and see what comes out. Chronology irritates me. There is no chronology inside my head. I am composed of a myriad Claudias who spin and mix and part like sparks of sunlight on water. The pack of cards I carry around is forever shuffled and re-shuffled; there is no sequence, everything happens at once. The machines of the new technology, I understand, perform in much the same way: all knowledge is stored, to be summoned up at the flick of a key. They sound, in theory, more efficient. Some of my keys don’t work; others demand pass-words, codes, random unlocking sequences. The collective past, curiously, provides these. It is public property, but it is also deeply private. We all look differently at it. My Victorians are not your Victorians. My seventeenth century is not yours. The voice of John Aubrey, of Darwin, of whoever you like, speaks in one tone to me, in another to you. The signals of my own past come from the received past. The lives of others slot into my own life: I, me, Claudia H.

Self-centred? Probably. Aren’t we all? Why is it a term of accusation? That is what it was when I was a child. I was considered difficult. Impossible, indeed, was the word sometimes used. I didn’t think I was impossible at all; it was mother and nurse who were impossible, with their injunctions and their warnings, their obsessions with milk puddings and curled hair and their terror of all that was inviting about the natural world – high trees and deeper water and the texture of wet grass on bare feet, the allure of mud and snow and fire. I always ached – burned – to go higher and faster and further. They admonished; I disobeyed.

Gordon, too. My brother Gordon. We were birds of a feather.

My beginnings; the universal beginning. From the mud to the stars, I said. So … the primordial soup. Now since I have never been a conventional historian, never the expected archetypal chronicler, never like that dried-up bone of a woman who taught me about the Papacy at Oxford time out of mind ago, since I’m known for my maverick line, since I’ve infuriated more colleagues than you’ve had hot dinners, we’ll set out to shock. Tell it from the point of view of the soup, maybe? Have one of those drifting floating feathery crustaceans narrate. Or an ammonite? Yes, an ammonite, I think. An ammonite with a sense of destiny. A spokesperson for the streaming Jurassic seas, to tell it how it was.

But here the kaleidoscope shakes. The Palaeolithic, for me, is just one shake of the pattern away from the nineteenth century – which first effectively noticed it, noticed upon what they were walking. Who could not be attracted to those majestic figures, striding about beaches and hillsides, overdressed and bewhiskered, pondering immensities? Poor misguided Philip Gosse, Hugh Miller and Lyell and Darwin himself. There seems a natural affinity between frock coats and beards and the resonances of the rocks – Mesozoic and Triassic, oolite and lias, Cornbrash and Greensand.

But Gordon and I, aged eleven and ten, had never heard of Darwin; our concept of time was personal and semantic (tea-time, dinner-time, last time, wasting time …); our interest in Asteroceras and Primocroceras was acquisitive and competitive. For the sake of beating Gordon to a choice-looking seam of Jurassic mud I was prepared to bash a hundred and fifty million years to pieces with my shiny new hammer and if necessary break my own arm or leg falling off a vertical section of Blue Lias on Charmouth beach in 1920.

She climbs a little higher, on to another sliding shelving plateau of the cliff, and squats searching furiously the blue grey fragments of rock around her, hunting for those enticing curls and ribbed whorls, pouncing once with a hiss of triumph – an ammonite, almost whole. The beach, now, is quite far below; its shrill cries, its barkings, its calls are clear and loud but from another world, of no account.

And all the time out of the corner of her eye she watches Gordon, who is higher yet, tap-tapping at an outcrop. He ceases to tap; she can see him examining something. What has he got? Suspicion and rivalry burn her up. She scrambles through little bushy plants, hauls herself over a ledge.

‘This is my bit,’ cries Gordon. ‘You can’t come here. I’ve bagged it.’

‘I don’t care,’ yells Claudia. ‘Anyway I’m going up higher –it’s much better further up.’ And she hurls herself upwards over skinny plants and dry stony soil that cascades away downwards under her feet, up towards a wonderfully promising enticing grey expanse she has spotted where surely Asteroceras is lurking by the hundred.

Below, on the beach, unnoticed, figures scurry to and fro; faint bird-like cries of alarm waft up.

She must pass Gordon to reach that alluring upper shelf. ‘Mind …’ she says. ‘Move your leg …’

‘Don’t shove,’ he grumbles. ‘Anyway you can’t come here. I said this is my bit, you find your own.’

‘Don’t shove yourself. I don’t want your stupid bit …’

His leg is in her way – it thrashes, she thrusts, and a piece of cliff, of the solid world which evidently is not so solid after all, shifts under her clutching hands … crumbles … and she is falling thwack backwards on her shoulders, her head, her outflung arm, she is skidding rolling thumping downwards. And comes to rest gasping in a thorn bush, hammered by pain, too affronted even to yell.

He can feel her getting closer, encroaching, she is coming here on to his bit, she will take all the best fossils. He protests. He sticks a foot to impede. Her hot infuriating limbs are mixed up with his.

‘You’re pushing me,’ she shrieks.

‘I’m not,’ he snarls. ‘It’s you that’s shoving. Anyway this is my place so go somewhere else.’

‘It’s not your stupid place,’ she says. ‘It’s anyone’s place. Anyway I don’t…’

And suddenly there are awful tearing noises and thumps and she is gone, sliding and hurtling down, and in horror and satisfaction he stares.

‘He pushed me.’

‘I didn’t. Honestly mother, I didn’t. She slipped.’

‘He pushed me.’

And even amid the commotion – the clucking mothers and nurses, the improvised sling, the proffered smelling salts – Edith Hampton can marvel at the furious tenacity of her children.

‘Don’t argue. Keep still, Claudia.’

‘Those are my ammonites. Don’t let him get them, mother.’

‘I don’t want your ammonites.’

‘Gordon, be quiet!’

Her head aches; she tries to quell the children and respond to advice and sympathy; she blames the perilous world, so unreliable, so malevolent. And the intransigeance of her offspring whose emotions seem the loudest sound on the beach.

The voice of history, of course, is composite. Many voices; all the voices that have managed to get themselves heard. Some louder than others, naturally. My story is tangled with the stories of others – Mother, Gordon, Jasper, Lisa, and one other person above all; their voices must be heard also, thus shall I abide by the conventions of history. I shall respect the laws of evidence. Of truth, whatever that may be. But truth is tied to words, to print, to the testimony of the page. Moments shower away; the days of our lives vanish utterly, more insubstantial than if they had been invented. Fiction can seem more enduring than reality. Pierre on the field of battle, the Bennet girls at their sewing, Tess on the threshing machine – all these are nailed down for ever, on the page and in a million heads. What happened to me on Charmouth beach in 1920, on the other hand, is thistledown. And when you and I talk about history we don’t mean what actually happened, do we? The cosmic chaos of everywhere, all time? We mean the tidying up of this into books, the concentration of the benign historical eye upon years and places and persons. History unravels; circumstances, following their natural inclination, prefer to remain ravelled.

So, since my story is also theirs, they too must speak – Mother, Gordon, Jasper . .. Except that of course I have the last word. The historian’s privilege.

Mother. Let us take, for a moment, Mother. Mother retired from history. She withdrew, quite simply. She opted for a world of her own creation in which there was nothing except floribunda roses, ecclesiastical tapestry and some changeable weather. She read only the West Dorset Gazette, Country Life and the periodicals of the Royal Horticultural Society. Her greatest anxieties were concentrated on the vagaries of the climate. An unexpected frost could cause mild consternation. A bad summer was matter for gentle complaint. Fortunate Mother. Sensible, expedient Mother. On her dressing-table stood a photograph of Father, trim in his uniform, eternally young, his hair recently clipped, his moustache a neat shadow on his upper lip; no red hole in his stomach, no shit no screams no white singing pain. Mother dusted this photograph every morning; what she thought as she did so I never knew.

History killed Father. I am dying of cancer of the gut, relatively privately. Father died on the Somme, picked off by history. He lay in the mud, I have learned, all one night, screaming, and when at last they came for him he died on the stretcher, between the crater that had been his last bed and the dressing-station. Thinking, I imagine, of anything but history.

So he is a stranger to me. An historical figure. Except for one misty scene in which a poorly defined male shape stoops to lift me and puts me excitingly on his shoulder from whence I lord it over the world including Gordon down below who has not been thus favoured. Even then, you note, my feelings towards Gordon predominate. But whether this undefined male is Father or not I can’t be certain; it could be an uncle, a neighbour. Father’s course and mine were not long entwined.

So I shall start with the rocks. Appropriately. The rocks from which we spring and to which we’re chained, all of us. Like wretched thingummy, what’s-his-name, him on his rock …

‘Chained to a rock …’ she says. ‘What’s he called?’

And the doctor pauses, his face a foot from hers, his little silver torch poised, his name in gilt letters pinned to his white coat. ‘Sorry? What did you say, Miss Hampton?’

‘An eagle,’ she states. ‘Pecking out his liver. The human condition, d’you see?’

And the doctor smiles, indulgently. ‘Ah,’ he says. And he parts her eyelids, with care, and peers. Into her soul, perhaps.

Prometheus, of course. Mythology is much better stuff than history. It has form; logic; a message. I once thought I was a myth. Summoned to the drawing-room, aged six or so, to meet a relative richer and more worldly than Mother, of whom Mother was in awe, I found myself swept up, held at arms’ length by this gorgeous scented woman, exclaimed at: ‘And here she is! The little myth! A real delicious red-haired green-eyed little myth!’ Upstairs, I examined my hair and eyes in the nursery mirror. I am a Myth. I am Delicious. ‘That’ll do, Claudia,’ says nurse. ‘Handsome is as handsome does.’ But I am a Myth; I gaze at myself in satisfaction.

Claudia. An uncharacteristic flight of fancy on Mother’s part; I stood out like a sore thumb amid the Violets and Mauds and Norahs and Beatrices. But I stood out anyway, with my hair and turbulence of mind. Other families’ nurses, on the beach at Charmouth, quailed when we hove in sight, and gathered their charges around them. We were nasty rough children, Gordon and I. A shame, really, with Mrs Hampton such a nice person and a widow too … They tutted and watched us with disfavour, playing too noisily, too dangerously, an unkempt, unruly pair.

A long time ago. And yesterday. I have still a chunk of Blue Lias from Charmouth beach in which hang two grey fossil curls; it has acted as a paperweight on my desk. Two Asteroceras, adrift in a timeless ocean.

Perhaps I shall not write my account of the Palaeolithic at all, but make a film of it. A silent film at that, in which I shall show you first the great slumbering rocks of the Cambrian period, and move from those to the mountains of Wales, the Long Mynd, the Wrekin, from Ordovician to Devonian, to Red Sandstone and Millstone Grit, on to the lush glowing Cotswolds, on to the white cliffs of Dover … An impressionistic, dreaming film, in which the folded rocks arise and flower and grow and become Salisbury Cathedral and York Minster and Royal Crescent and gaols and schools and homes and railway stations. Yes, this film blooms before my eyes, wordless and specific, homing in on a Cornish cliff, Stonehenge, Burford church, the Pennines.

I shall use many voices, in this history. Not for me the cool level tone of dispassionate narration. Perhaps I should write like the scribes of The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, saying in the same breath that an archbishop passed away, a synod was held, and fiery dragons were seen flying in the air. Why not, after all? Beliefs are relative. Our connection with reality is always tenuous. I do not know by what magic a picture appears on my television screen, or how a crystal chip has apparently infinite capacities. I accept, simply. And yet I am by nature sceptical – a questioner, a doubter, an instinctive agnostic. In the frozen stone of the cathedrals of Europe there co-exist the Apostles, Christ and Mary, lambs, fish, gryphons, dragons, sea-serpents and the faces of men with leaves for hair. I approve of that liberality of mind.

Children are infinitely credulous. My Lisa was a dull child, but even so she came up with things that pleased and startled me. ‘Are there dragons?’ she asked. I said that there were not. ‘Have there ever been?’ I said all the evidence was to the contrary. ‘But if there is a word dragon,’ she said, ‘then once there must have been dragons.’

Precisely. The power of language. Preserving the ephemeral; giving form to dreams, permanence to sparks of sunlight.

There is a dragon on a Chinese dish in the Ashmolean museum in Oxford, before which Jasper and I once stood, eight months or so before Lisa was born. How should I describe Jasper? In several ways, each of them deficient: in terms of my life, he was my lover and the father of my only child; in terms of his own, he was a clever successful entrepreneur; in cultural terms, he was a fusion of Russian aristocracy and English gentry. He was also good-looking, persuasive, potent, energetic and selfish. I have Tito to thank for Jasper; I met him in 1946 when I was working on the Partisan book and needed to talk to anyone who had had anything to do with the Jugoslavian business. I dined with him on a Tuesday and we were in bed together the following Saturday. For the next ten years we sometimes lived together, sometimes did not, fought, made it up, parted and were reunited. Lisa, my poor Lisa, a silent and pasty little girl, was the tangible evidence of our restless union, and an unconvincing one: she never looked or behaved like either of us.

Unlike her father, who nicely manifested his ancestry. His good looks and his cavalier approach to life he inherited from his Russian father; his unshakeable social confidence and sense of superiority from his mother. Isabel, heiress to a chunk of Devon and centuries of calm prosperity and self-advancement, had had a rush of blood to the head in Paris at the age of nineteen. Defying her parents, she married the irresistible Sasha. Jasper was born when she was twenty-one. By the time she was twenty-two Sasha had got bored with life as a Devon squire, Isabel had come to her senses and recognised a disastrous mistake, and a discreet divorce was arranged. Sasha, paid by Isabel’s father to remove himself from the scene and give up all but residual rights in Jasper, retired without complaint to a villa at Cap Ferrat; Isabel, after a decent interval, married a childhood friend and became Lady Branscombe of Sotleigh Hall. Jasper spent his youth at Eton and in Devon, with occasional excursions to Cap Ferrat. When he was sixteen these sorties became more frequent. He found his father’s life-style stimulating and an agreeable antidote to hunt balls and shooting parties; he learned to speak French and Russian, to love women and to be able to turn most situations to his advantage. In Devonshire, his mother sighed regretfully and blamed herself; her husband, a man of stoical tolerance who was to die on the Normandy beaches, tried to interest the boy in estate management, forestry and stud farming, all without success. Jasper, as well as being half Russian, was clever. His mother apologised still further. Jasper went to Cambridge, dabbled in everything except sport, got a double first and made a great many useful friends. Afterwards, he sampled politics and journalism, had a brilliant war as the youngest member of Churchill’s staff, and emerged from it ambitious, well-connected and opportunist.

Thus, in general, Jasper. In my head, Jasper is fragmented: there are many Jaspers, disordered, without chronology. As there are many Gordons, many Claudias.

Claudia and Jasper stand before the dragon on the Chinese dish in the Ashmolean, Jasper looking at Claudia and Claudia at the dragon, inadvertently learning it for ever. There are two dragons, in fact, blue spotted dragons confronting one another, teeth bared, their serpentine bodies and limbs wonderfully disposed around the dish. They have what appear to be antlers, fine blue manes, tufts of hair at the elbows and they are crested from head to tail. A most precise definition. Claudia stares into the case, seeing her own face and Jasper’s superimposed upon the plates – ghost faces.

‘Well?’ says Jasper.

‘Well what?’

‘Are you coming with me to Paris or not?’

Jasper wears a brown duffel coat, a silk scarf instead of a tie. The briefcase he carries is incongruous.

‘Possibly,’ says Claudia. ‘I’ll see.’

‘That won’t do,’ says Jasper.

Claudia contemplates the dragons, thinking of something quite other. The dragons are backcloth, but will last.

‘Well,’ says Jasper again, ‘I hope you will. I’ll phone from London. Tomorrow.’ He glances at his watch. ‘I’ll have to go.’

‘One thing …’ says Claudia.

‘Yes?’

‘I’m

Reviews for Moon Tiger

[steve02476 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Beautiful sad story of a singular woman who lived her life with bravery and honesty, but without a lot of the social ties that most people have. Lots of sudden switches between first-person and third-person viewpoints, also lots of hopping around in time, but the switching was done very artfully.

I listened to the audiobook and Ruth Urquhart did a wonderful job reading the book.

[castlelass · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

“A history of the world, yes. And in the process, my own. The Life and Times of Claudia H. The bit of the twentieth century to which I’ve been shackled, willy-nilly, like it or not. Let me contemplate myself within my context: everything and nothing. The history of the world as selected by Claudia: fact and fiction, myth and evidence, images and documents.”

Protagonist Claudia, age seventy-seven, lies in a London hospital bed, dying of cancer. She is sifting through memories. Born in 1910, she pursues a career in journalism and history, going against the societal expectations of a woman of her era. Through flashbacks, flashforwards, and multiple points of view, the reader learns the story of Claudia’s life. She has an early incestual bond with her brother. She falls in love with a soldier while on assignment in Africa during WWII. She experiences turbulent relationships with family and lovers.

Claudia is an independent woman who has lived life on her own terms. She has made some decisions she regrets. I particularly enjoyed the vivid scenes in Africa, where the emotional core of the novel lies. I think the author does a great job of portraying the way memories come in fragments, lead to other memories, then circle back. Themes include love, loss, time, mortality, and memory. It is subtle, meditative, and sad. I can see why this book won the Booker Prize in 1987.

“Death is total absence, you said. Yes and no. You are not absent so long as you are in my head. That, of course, is not what you meant; you were thinking of the extinction of the flesh. But it is true; I preserve you, as others will preserve me. For a while.”

4.5

[drfuriosa · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A beautifully written account of how history shapes us and how we shape our own histories. I loved this. It reminds me of The Stone Diaries, The English Patient, and The Blind Assassin.

[japaul22 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I absolutely loved this book. Claudia is at the end of her life and decides to "write" a history of the world in her head while lying in the hospital. She muses on her life and her relationships. Among these are a brief love affair during WWII, an intimate relationship with her brother, and a tense relationship with her daughter. There are lots of insights into living along the way. I found the whole thing very well done. Highly recommended.

[alexrichman_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Hailed as a forgotten classic, I hope this Booker winner finds more new readers like me. A woozy story about love and ageing, I’d recommend this to anyone and look forward to making my way though more of Lively’s work.

[laytonwoman3rd · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Claudia Hampton's life is drawing to a close, drifting softly away to smoke and ash like a burning mosquito repellent coil, the Moon Tiger of the title...the symbol of a brief intense period of her life when love was the glowing eye at its center. As Claudia slips in and out of consciousness her mind is occupied with "writing" her autobiography. Her memories and musings of past affairs and other attachments are interspersed with vignettes from the point of view of some of the players in her story. Claudia was a war correspondent; a writer of popular history; an independent, not entirely likeable person whether seen from her own perspective or that of family, lovers or friends. And yet, her life makes quite compelling reading. At the end, we regret her failed relationships, the loss of her one great passion, and the falling of that last bit of ash only slightly less than she does herself.

[pgchuis · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Claudia looks back on her life as she is dying and remembers her intense relationship with her brother Gordon, and the love of her life Tom, who was killed in WWII. She also remembers her daughter Lisa, whom she found boring and left to be brought up mostly by her grandmothers; Jasper, Lisa's father, who was not the love of her life; Sylvia, Gordon's wife, who could not compete with Claudia in any arena; and Laszlo, a Hungarian refugee, whose function in the story escapes me - the son she wishes she had?I enjoyed this novel very much, although Claudia was hard to sympathize with (except in the heart-breaking Tom sections). Interesting about the war in Egypt and the difference between history as it is experienced and as it is recorded.

[gypsysmom_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Moon Tiger is a brand of mosquito coil that, like life, burns briefly before turning to ash. Claudia Hampton is 76, lying in a hospital bed, dying of cancer and reflecting on her past. A former newspaper correspondent and writer of popular history, she is writing a book: “ A history of the world, yes. And in the process, my own. The Life and Times of Claudia H. The bit of the twentieth century to which I’ve been shackled, willy-nilly, like it or not. Let me contemplate myself within my context: everything and nothing. The history of the world as selected by Claudia; fact and fiction, myth and evidence, images and documents.” She takes a “kaleidoscopic view”, selecting scenes randomly from her childhood after the First World War, her time as a correspondent in Egypt during World War II, to the present day where, after an eventful life, she finds herself simply an elderly woman being treated patronizingly by the nurses: “Was she someone?”, one of them asks. She acknowledges that the past is subjective, shaped by the words that recount it and gives us the same events from other points of view. A complex and not always sympathetic character, Claudia is beautiful, intelligent, independent, and unconventional. She and her brother have an unnaturally close relationship. She lacks in maternal feeling, refusing to be called “Mummy” and leaving her daughter to be raised by her grandmothers. She never marries the father although they maintain an on-again, off-again relationship for years. Claudia is at her most sympathetic during a short-lived romance in Egypt during the war. The book is somewhat slow paced but well-written and interesting.

[m.belljackson · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Evocative portrait of 1940s wartime Cairo and Egyptian desert eventually winds back to Montezuma (Cuauhtemoc?) and Cortez in Mexico.Claudia, the main character, works as a newspaper correspondent unaffected deeply by the war until she falls in love with Tom.The war then becomes real for her because she has someone to watch and wait for.This short lived romance offers a brief respite in the endless Claudia and brother Gordon hostile/forgiving repartee and love lust.It was unfair to either of their eventual spouses that these two rude and insufferably self centered persons should marry.The book, like so many more recent novels, offers many dimensions of unlikeable characters for whom it is nearly impossible to feel a connection.It's no wonder that adult readers are drawn to Harry Potter.

[piemouth · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Claudia is dying, looking back on her long and eventful life. She's prickly, not much of a mother. She's always been a woman who's done what she wanted. She thinks about history, people she's loved, people who were part of her life and have become part of her. Some relationships were difficult or unconventional but all part of life's rich tapestry. Her memories of childhood, war years when she was a correspondent in Egypt, motherhood, her writing career - all are vivid and evocative. I loved this book.

[edwinbcn · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Moon tiger is a brilliant novel by the award-winning author Penelope Lively. In 1987, she was awarded the Booker Prize for her novel Moon tiger. Penelope Lively was born in Cairo, Egypt and spent her early youth, including the years of the Second World War there, from 1933 to 1945. She recorded her early memories of life in Cairo and Alexandria in her memoir, Oleander, Jacaranda. A childhood perceived (1994). Moon tiger is also describes that period in Egypt, but by a protagonist who is at least 20 years older.In Moon tiger, Claudia Hampton, a historian, passing in and out of consciousness remembers her life and times. The narrative is interspersed with fragments of a book about the history of the world, which Hampton had been working on. Thus, the Second World War is fought against the setting of ancient history. This perception is stronger in the mind. As E.M. Forster in Aspects of the novel described the authors congregating, imagining: the English novelists as seated together in a room, a circular room, a sort of British Museum reading-room – all writing their novels simultaneously. Likewise, Claudia Hampton's perception of history is circular, rather than linear: she cannot "write chronologically of Egypt" (p. 80) In Claudia's mind everything is there, simultaneously.This motive is worked out throughout the novel, along the lines of Claudia's life. Her love for Tom, their still-born child, her marriage marriage with Jasper and her daughter Lisa. As she passes back and forth into consciousness, she passes back and forth into episodes of history, world history as well as her life history, which coincide in Egypt, as later, personal and world history intersect in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. The idea of the circularity of history is reflected in the circular shape of the "moon tiger", the slowly burning coil.Moon tiger is a beautifully conceived novel, written in a fine style, close to the prose style of Iris Murdoch. The main idea of the circular, or instantaneous nature of history is exquisite, and in making the main character in the novel a historian, the novel offers ample material for the reader to ponder the relation and differences between time and history.

[vancouverdeb · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Let me preface this review by saying that I have read two books by Penelope Lively, Family Album and How It All Began. She is one of my favourite authors ,based on those two books, but sadly [Moon Tiger ] disappointed me. Perhaps my expectations were too high, or perhaps she has refined her writing over time. The characters in Moon Tiger were not well developed and I found them difficult to like , or even have much of a sense of them. Claudia, the main character, around whom everyone seems to rotate, struck me as a narcissist . Claudia says about herself at about 80 % into my kindle, " The life of an attractive woman is different from a plain one....when I was eight years old I realized I was pretty - from that moment onwards a course was set. Intelligence made me one kind of being; intelligence allied with good looks made me another. " She seems to judge everyone that she meets on that basis, and none measures up to Claudia, save perhaps her lover, Thomas and her brother Gordon. Claudia resents her brother's wife , Sylvia, essentially on the basis that she is plain and plump and also not deemed intelligent by Claudia. I suppose it is possible Claudia might have resented any wife of her brothers, due to Claudia's relationship with her brother. Jasper, her on and off lover, comes and goes as Claudia wishes or needs him. Their daughter, Lisa, is mainly an inconvenience to Claudia, and Lisa is quickly shipped away to live with her grandmothers. Thomas, her one "true love", well, suffice it to say that love and war often lead to tragedy. I have such a negative opinion of Claudia that I have trouble thinking that any relationship that she had could last for any amount of time.I felt that Lively could have fleshed out the the characters so that a reader could feel some sort of connection or sympathy to a character, but Lively failed to do that. I wished I could have know Claudia better, so as to understand her , as well as the rest of the characters, but it was not to be. Lively did a wonderful job with shifting time, narrators, and her use of language is beautiful. But for me, I was left with a feeling of shallow impressions of both the characters and the places that Claudia interacted with. On the plus side, I am keen to read Lively's memoir, Dancing Fish and Ammonites: A Memoir. Perhaps that will give me more insight into [Moon Tiger] . I hope so!3.5 stars

[berly_4 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Claudia Hampton is a beautiful, famous writer, old now, dying in a hospital. The nurses tend to her with quiet condescension, but she is unfazed, quietly plotting her greatest work :a history of the world, and by this she means her own.Claudia is not necessarily a likable woman. I wondered throughout the story how she would have fared if she had been any less than beautiful? But that hardly matters. I loved this book for the amazing prose and the mosaic storytelling, effortlessly switching from present to past, exquisitely shifting from one point of view to another, the personal details amidst the vastness of history. There is her adored brother, Gordon; Jasper, the charming, playboy lover; Lisa, her sadly conventional daughter; and her one great love, a soldier found in the blowing sands of wartime Egypt. The story of Claudia's life is indeed masterfully told in this Booker Prize Winner. Here are a few of my favorite Claudia quotes (I think I used a half of tin of those Book Darts!):"Shall it or shall it not be linear history? I've always thought a kaleidoscope view might be an interesting heresy. Shake the tube and see what comes out. Chronology irritates me. There is no chronology inside my head. I am composed of a myriad Claudias who spin and mix and part like sparks of sunlight on water." (page 2--Yup, smitten already, I was!)"If feminism had been around then I'd have taken it up, I suppose; it would have needed me." (page 14--Did I mention she was arrogant?)We will win the war, says her true love. "Not because the Lord's intervention or because justice will prevail but because in the last resort we have greater resources. Wars have little to do with justice. Or valor or sacrifice or the other things traditionally associated with them...War has been much misrepresented, believe me. It's had disgracefully good press." (page 102)And one from Gordon for good measure: " 'Mad opportunists,' says Gordon. 'Tito. Napoleon. That's not real history. History is the grey stuff. Products. Systems of government. Climates of opinion. It moves slowly. That's why you get impatient with it. You look for spectacle.' " (page 186)Definitely recommended! Four stars.

[ffortsa · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Lively presents an intimate portrait of a fiercely independent woman, intelligent and adventurous, as she reviews the world from the uncompromising perspective of her own life. I loved the way memory was represented as simultaneity of events - and how Lively shows us the truth of other people's perspectives as well. Wonderful writing.

[smiler69 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In Moon Tiger, historian Claudia Hampton is lying on her deathbed reflecting on her past, though she chooses to call it a word history. This is probably meant to be somewhat ironic—Claudia has a peculiar sense of humour and most definitely has her very own way of looking at things, as she considers we each have our very unique experiences of events (a point on which I completely agree with her). She reflects on the nature of history and time, on whether they are linear and her thoughts bounce around very much in a non-linear fashion to her childhood and the competitive relationship with her brother Gordon; to an on-and-off lover with Russian roots called Jasper with whom she had a daughter—mostly estranged—called Lisa; to another lover, much dearer to her, lost during WWII, called Tom; to a young refugee she helped called Laszlo. These various people come visit her in the hospital where she is lying and drifting in and out of consciousness, those no longer living visit her in thought as she reflects back on the various relationships she's had with them. The mother who was distant. The daughter who was colourless, the lover in Egypt whom she had hopes to marry, tragically lost and forever cherished in memory. The brother with whom no other man could ultimately compete. All these reflections seen from the perspective of a woman who has always had an independent and strong spirit, who has always done things in her own way and has never sought approval, not from her mother or her lovers or her daughter. A woman who became a war journalist and travelled into the Egyptian dessert when women were not allowed to do so. A woman who devoted her life to her art, to her writing.All this should have fascinated me, should have pulled me in. It all made for an excellent story, I could see that objectively, I could also see that Lively was an excellent writer and knew how to put together words beautifully, yet I felt this wasn't written for me. Hard to explain really, but at no point was I able to connect with this book, and my greatest interest was in looking at the number of minutes left in the ebook on my Kindle app, which I think is rather telling. Maybe it was just the wrong timing. Or maybe, this being the second Lively book I failed to connect with, I just don't 'get' her. I'll give her one more try, then I'll decide.

[ebt1002 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I loved this novel! Seventy-six-year-old Claudia contemplates "the potency of life" from her death bed. She sardonically states her intention to write a history of the world and, instead, tells the history of her life. Her life is, of course, a reflection of (part of) the history of the world, and this narrative provides a mirror in which to view the terrible insignificance of any particular life in the context of the whole of human existence. Fate, destiny, self-determination. Connection, isolation, aloneness-in-intimacy. Love, loss, death, grief. It's all here, beautifully examined through Lively's remarkable prose. Claudia is not an entirely sympathetic protagonist and that is part of Lively's point. Claudia herself names her own ambition and striving as key players in the disappointment of her life. But, on a larger level, the vicissitudes of fate or luck, the time into which one is born, the context of place in which one finds oneself -- all determines the path of one's life and there is only so much truth to the absurd notion that "destiny is what one makes of it." "But no one likes the idea of chance, so they play games with language and talk about miracles instead." The power of language and the role it plays in defining truth, creating meaning: this is also a theme throughout this novel. And of course there is love. Love, a word that is "overstretched" and "cannot be made to do service for so many different things -- love of children , love of friends, love of God, carnal love and cupidity and saintliness." My library copy of Moon Tiger is littered with post-it flags but there is no way to fully capture the scope of the novel's emotional field. I experienced brief moments of boredom but it's the joy that I will remember.

[jolerie · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The power of language. Preserving the ephemeral; giving form to dreams, permanence to sparks of sunlight. Claudia's ambitions drive her to recount a history of the world and in doing so she will also share with us the story of her life. It is a story of the events that have shaped her into the person she is today. It is also more importantly a story of the people who have come and gone, drifted in and out, shared and taken a portion of essence that is Claudia. It is a truth of the world as she is and the delicate tension between how the world shapes us and how we in turn shape the world we live in.This Man Booker Prize winner is undoubtably a beautiful piece of writing. It is neither rushed nor frivolous. It is methodical, contemplative, intentional, and Lively demonstrates her gift of poetic expression with a deft hand. My only struggle? For all the beautiful writing and my awe of her talent, I just couldn't connect with Claudia, or any of the characters for that matter. I always felt like they were just outside my reach, a bit standoffish, and ultimately unconnected. Ambivalence towards the character in a story is death to a reader. I will most likely seek out other Lively books because she is a talented writer and hopefully this was just a one time issue and not a theme I will come across with all her books. Recommended for the sheer force of her writing.

[bookomaniac-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Ik begrijp niet waarom dit boekje nergens in toplijstjes terug te vinden is. Het kreeg wel de Bookerprijs in 1987 (maar dat was nog de tijd voor de grote hypes), maar daarna bleef het vrij stil, terwijl dit eigenlijk toch wel een pareltje is. Misschien komt het omdat het verhaal zelf eerder een hoog stationsroman-gehalte heeft: dat van een vrijgevochten vrouw, Claudia Hampton, die op haar sterfbed terugblikt op haar bewogen leven en met vooral een korte, vergeefse passionele liefde als centrale as. Ook de omslagillustratie van mijn editie lijkt een hoog pulpgehalte uit te stralen. Maar vergis je niet: dit is wel degelijk een bijzonder interessant, zelfs moeilijk boek, dat heel veel vraagt van de aandachtige lezer, maar ook veel teruggeeft. Deze recensie kan dat onmogelijk recht doen.In de eerste plaats is het het verhaal van een vrijgevochten vrouw die heel eigenzinnig in het leven staat, en haar eigen onconventionele keuzes maakt, frontaal ingaand tegen wat haar omgeving en de maatschappij van haar verwacht, dat gaat dan zowel om persoonlijke (ze heeft een af- en aan-relatie met de vader van haar kind; ze weigert de gewone moederrol op te nemen) als professionele aspecten (ze brengt het tot oorlogscorrespondent, schrijft historische boeken die de academische -mannelijke- historici tegen de borst stuiten). Lively probeert daarbij haar personage absoluut niet een heldenrol toe te dichten, integendeel Claudia komt best onsympathiek over. Ten tweede illustreert dit boekje knap de verwevenheid tussen een individueel leven met de wereldgeschiedenis. Claudia filosofeert constant over haar (onbeduidende) plaats in de hele geschiedenis. Mensen bevatten op zich de erfenis van de hele kosmologische geschiedenis, maar tegelijk staan ze er zo ver van af, voelen ze er helemaal geen verbondenheid mee. Zeker als je dan kijkt naar de "officiële" geschiedschrijving, die lijkt het essentiële juist te verdoezelen. In die zin is het werk ook een postmoderne bezinning op de relatieve waarde van naar de geschiedenis te kijken (alles is verhaal, er zijn alleen maar persoonlijke verhalen).In dezelfde lijn wordt er ook ingezoomd op de subjectieve natuur van ervaringen (ook die van tijd) en op de problematische relatie tussen taal en werkelijkheid. Lively plaatst zich daarmee op en top in de postmoderne lijn van bijvoorbeeld een Julian Barnes of Graham Swift. Nog het meest bewondering heb ik voor de zin voor nuance en dosering die Lively aan de dag legt. Claudia is best een complex personage, dat gaandeweg ontdekt dat de drijvende kracht achter haar leven haar competitie met en aantrekking tot haar broer Gordon is. Ook het liefdesverhaal wordt op een heel delicate manier gebracht: haar ene passionele liefde met de soldaat Tom, in Caïro tijdens de tweede wereldoorlog, en de dramatische wending als Tom sneuvelt, hebben natuurlijk een enorme impact op haar leven, maar toch weet Lively de val te vermijden van een te sentimentele behandeling van dit drama; ook Claudia weet in haar lange leven na die affaire de episode zijn plaats te geven. Dat getuigt van een enorm gevoel voor levenswijsheid. De sterfscene aan het slot is trouwens een van de mooiste die ik ooit gelezen heb.Kortom, dit boekje is een kleinood om te koesteren.

[msstephie · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A beautiful piece of writing.

[rmckeown_9 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

My Sunday mornings are filled with the dawn sky, a cup of tea, the sounds of birds at the feeders, and The New York Times Book Review. The first feature in the review I look for is “By the Book” – usually an interview with an author who has a new book or won a prize. Recently, the column featured Alice Hoffman. The most interesting question in this series is the interviewees “favorite overlooked or under-appreciated writer.” Hoffman mentioned Penelope Lively, so I decided to read Moon Tiger, Lively’s 1987 Man Booker Prize-winning novel. According to her website, Penelope was born in Cairo, Egypt. She came to England at the age of twelve and went to boarding school in Sussex. She subsequently read Modern History at St. Anne's College, Oxford. Lively now has six grandchildren and lives in London. She has written 20 novels along with several works of non-fiction and a whole shelf of children’s books.Moon Tiger is the story of Claudia Hampton, who lies in a bed and passes in and out of consciousness. She has written historical works and decides she will write a history of the world. The novel alternates between lucid moments, plans for the history, and remembering her visits to those places. When doctors, nurses, her daughter, Lisa, or her sister-in-law, Sylvia, stop by for visits, she chats a bit but then falls asleep. She delineates the chapters of her book, but she always slides toward recalling visits to those places while a correspondent during World War II. Interestingly enough, these “out-of-consciousness” moments shift between first and third person accounts. The “History of the World” slowly devolves into a “History of Claudia.”I found these changes in point of view a bit disconcerting at first, but once I became accustomed to them, the novel carried me along to Egypt. From that point on, I could hardly put it down. Claudia has some disdain for Sylvia. Lively writes, “She has given little trouble. She has devoted herself to children and houses. A nice, old-fashioned girl, Mother called her, at their third meeting, seeing quite correctly through the superficial disguise of pink fingernails, swirling New Look skirts and a cloud of Mitsouko cologne spray. There was a proper wedding, which Mother loved, with arum lilies, little bridesmaids and a marquee on the lawn of Sylvia’s parents’ home at Farnham. I declined to be matron of honour and Gordon got rather drunk at the reception. They spent their honeymoon in Spain and Sylvia settled down to live, as she thought, happily ever after in North Oxford” (23). I detected a note of jealousy, because Claudia and Gordon were rather close.So, I have another check mark on my journey through the Man Booker Prize Novels, and I continue to believe this prize represents the best literary fiction. Alice Hoffman was correct. Penelope Lively is most definitely under-appreciated, and Moon Tiger is a great example of her work. I have one more of her novels, and then … but you know what I am going to say. 5 stars --Jim 3/7/14

[lit_chick_2 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

"Chronology irritates me. There is no chronology inside my head ... The pack of cards I carry around is forever shuffled and reshuffled; there is no sequence, everything happens at once." (Ch 1)Claudia Hampton, 76-year-old English woman, historian, and war correspondent, is terminally ill. Fading in and out of consciousness, she determines she will write a history of the world with her life as the blueprint. Her first memories are of her father, who lost his life to WWI in the summer of 1920. Claudia’s “history” directs the novel back and forth in time, from this point in 1920 to post WWII. Her readers travel with her to India, Egypt, Hungary, Mexico, and beyond – through historical events, and, more importantly, through Claudia’s life, livelihood, and loves – “subordinating history to her own puny existence." (Ch 3)As Claudia’s life plays out against contemporary history, I found myself fascinated with her relationships. Her brother, Gordon, is, by turns, best friend, rival, and even lover. Tom, the English captain stationed in Cairo, her one true love – alas, great loves and war make tragic history. Later there is Jasper, a well connected young man and on-and-off lover, with whom Claudia has a turbulent relationship, and her only child. There’s Lazlo, too, the sensitive Hungarian college student, and something of a surrogate son. And Lisa, always a disappointment to her mother: Claudia looking for her own alter ego in her daughter, and Lisa looking for something else entirely. Of her relationship with her brother in their youth, Claudia recollects:"Incest is closely related to narcissism. When Gordon and I were at our most self-conscious – afire with sexuality and egotism of late adolescence – we looked at one another and saw ourselves translated … We confronted each other like mirrors, flinging back reflections in endless recession. We spoke to each other in code. Other people became, for a while, for a couple of contemptuous years, a proletariat. We were an aristocracy of two." (Ch 11)Lively is impressive in Moon Tiger. Not only does the narrative move back and forth in time, sometimes from sentence to sentence, but it is narrated from multiple points of view, all without missing a beat. I’m left pondering whether who we are dictates the course of history, or whether history determines who we are – it’s both I suspect, though I’m not sure in what measure. And Lively’s language is so beautiful. The novel is full of sentences which call on all of the senses to participate: "The smoke that Claudia exhales mingles with the yellow shafts of sunlight and hangs there, a soupy churning density in the clean air of the wood." (Ch 4)Highly recommended.

[nickelini · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Here is the summary of Moon Tiger: it is a 76 yr old woman’s reflections of her life as she lies on her deathbed. Even if she had an interesting life (which Claudia did indeed), the premise is still bo-ring! But the catch is that one doesn’t read Moon Tiger for the story. Instead, one reads it for the writing and technique—this is a book for literature lovers. Claudia is a feisty and sometimes abrasive character that some readers won’t warm to, but I rather liked her determination and independence. Mostly though, what I really liked is her narrative voice, whether she’s speaking in the first person or being described in the third. The narrative point of view is what makes this novel special. Many scenes are told two or three times, from different viewpoints, some of which Claudia wasn’t aware of. I also loved how Lively subtly repeats details that seem insignificant yet symbolize the important points of the story—for example, the moon tiger of the title, which is a mosquito coil that burns down while Claudia lies in bed with her lover (and doesn’t protect her from coming down with malaria fever anyway). I didn’t fully embrace the book, however. About a third of the way through, Claudia shares her memories of her time in Egypt as a journalist during WWII. This is the pivotal point in her life, but after 30 pages of it, I put Moon Tiger aside and read three other books. When I picked it up, I went back to where Lively had lost me and started again. Part of it might be that I’ve read my fill of WWII stories, but even knowing this section was important, I didn’t enjoy the book again until she went back to life in Europe. I also found her WWII lover’s diary at the end pretty boring. I trust this is just my aversion to WWII stories, and won’t have anything to do with other reader’s tastes. Despite finding the book uneven, I still think it was worthy of the Booker Prize in 1987. Recommended for: fiction writers, who need to study her point of view techniques, literature lovers and people who want to read the Booker Prize winners, and readers who like non-linear, subtle novels. I look forward to reading more from Penelope Lively.

[astrologerjenny · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I loved this book. It’s engaging, thoughtful, beautifully written. It’s a woman’s life, written in her head as she lies dying, and she’s a wonderful character.

[nmele_4 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

No rating because I am not yet sure how I feel about this book. Well written it is but I can't help thinking I've read another story about a strong woman who loses the love of her life somewhere in the Sahara during World War II. In fact, it was central to the movie version, wasn't it? Hmmm.

[jenneb_2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

We were supposed to read this for my book club and I didn't, but I finally picked it up this weekend.
It was such a short easy read that I'm a bit surprised how much it's stuck with me. I keep thinking about it like you do when you've seen a really good movie.
Also: Laszlo! Love him.

[lovinglit · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Talk about a slow burner. For some reason, I plodded on through the patchy plot and came out with a winner. This book really kicks into gear just over half way through.Claudia is the story. She narrates it, mostly, and is telling it from her rest home bed. Alongside her telling her history of the world that is. She is a writer and an outwardly successful and capable person. It is fitting for someone like her to tackle a writing project as complex as "the history of the world" while ill and in decline. She is like that.She also has a personal story to tell, one of the usual trials and tribulations of life and love. And also some very surprising and moving events which end up shaping her as a person, more than even she would like to admit. Through being a war correspondent in Cairo, her close relationship with her brother, her casual marriage and her disdain for the uninteresting we learn enough about Claudia to figure out that she is eventually thoroughly likeable. And all written so cleverly.Lively has a distinctive writing style here, in that other characters throw in their perspective in a scene where the voice is all Claudia. A snippet here and there from someone elses voice shows so neatly how it is in life- when what happens is in the eye of the beholder.I am so glad I put in the time early on to read large-ish sections at a time. It really kept things moving and set me up for the page-turning second half.

[eachurch-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

An absolutely brilliant book. A fabulous story and a wondrous meditation on history. Claudia is a fascinating character. She is her own person. There are no 'shoulds' in her world, and I admire her for that. I love the non-linear structure and the way that Lively shows us the same event from more than one viewpoint (often three).

[herbcat_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book won the Booker Award, but I didn't like it because I couldn't stand the main characters (very self centered, cold hearted, controling, rude) until after Claudia met Tom and learned more about love and caring about someone besides herself and about being loved and feeling secure. I still didn't like her very much because she didn't change fundamentally and still her abysmal version of mothering. The narrative skips from place to place, era to era, and character to character. Such a challenge is supposed to make a book more three dimensional, but this just made it harder to read. It does have good perceptions of aging: how it feels and what it is like.

[oldblack-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Sheriji recommended this book to me and I'm grateful to her. It's a story about a woman reflecting on her life as she prepares to die. She has had a special life-long relationship with her brother and had another important relationship with a man who died in the war. My own sister is preparing to die at the moment so the story had particular significance for me. Nonetheless, I reckon many would agree that this is one of her better novels. The woman's life story is unusual for the era but I found it quite believable.

[lucy_rock_10 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I have to admit that this has been a difficult book to reconcile myself with. Not only did the premise of reading about an elderly woman on her deathbed sound a little depressing but our main protagonist neither said nor did very much to endear me throughout the initial few chapters.Claudia Hampton is a 76 year old woman; terminally ill and compiling her 'History of the World', a history that quickly descends into reminiscing about her life, the people within it, and the events that have shaped her. Throughout the sporadic retelling of her history, which occurs quite naturally and not necessarily chronologically as she slips in and out of consciousness, we meet significant characters and are transported through two world wars, the stark desert landscape of a besieged Egypt and an earth shattering romance to the present day to observe a strained and awkward daughter, a self-absorbed lover and a tortured, Hungarian artist visiting her bedside.Although I struggled to get along with Claudia at first, upon reflection I get the feeling that Lively has quite deliberately created a woman who the reader isn't necessarily going to warm to right away. Why, after all, should we always been indulged like children and feel comfortable with every character we encounter? As a professional (albeit controversial) historian and war correspondent, she is a strong, opinionated, compelling character whose ramblings betray some intriguing points of view. On the other hand, I found her to be obnoxious, arrogant, self-centered, cold and superior, meaning that I spent the first few chapters wondering exactly why I should care about her life at all!That aside, Lively did a fairly good job at crawling back some of my compassion, although her (almost) mother-like relationship with Lazlo didn't quite do it, her passionate relationship with Tom, an officer fighting out in the desert in Egypt during WWII, certainly did. In this short portion of the book we could almost be reading the internal thoughts of a completely different woman; soft, loving and refreshingly vulnerable.It is very difficult to really adore a book when you can't completely sympathise with characters or situations (e.g. I found her relationship with her brother Gordan to be a little disturbing, you'll have to read the book to learn more!) but I do relish a challenge and I do admire strong female characters. Do persevere with this book. It is very well-written, quite compelling and does create a bit of conflict in your mind. And if you persevere for just one thing, stick it out for the end. The final chapter contains some of the most beautiful and poignant passages I have read over the past couple of years. Claudia's honest approach to both her situation and the legacy she will leave behind is both admirable and thought-provoking.