Consequences by Penelope Lively

Consequences Reviews

• 
  Katie

  Moon Tiger was five incandescent stars; this is more like 4.5. It sagged a bit at times but the final stretch completely won me over.
  
  Consequences is like a family tree fairy story. The ending is maybe a bit contrived but I loved it! We get the lives of three women – grandmother, daughter and granddaughter. All three we see as young women making their way in the world. Thus Lively provides a fascinating evocation of every decade from the 1930s through to the first decade of our century. It’s a novel that manages to be tremendously romantic but without any schmaltz or syrup. There are things Lively does supremely well in this novel. Most of all perhaps to show the colossal changes in personal life that WW2 brought about. Before the war she creates an atmosphere in which liberating change is possible, the sense of an old stifling order about to birth something more expansive. Her portrait of a young family setting up home in the country is ravishing. The war takes away these new freedoms. Post war life is grim and still more stifling than what came before. The sixties, seventies and eighties she didn’t do so well. The trouble with multi-generational narratives is they tend to ramble on in a soap opera fashion, slowly losing a sense of purpose and this was true of this novel now and again. But I love Lively’s writing, love how vividly she sometimes returns to me memories of my own. And her observations about life are often inspired. Her observations on modern life I especially enjoyed, coming as they do from a woman who has lived through so many decades.
  
• 
  Hugh

  This is an intricately plotted, warm and intelligent story following three generations of an English family since the mid 30s. On one level this is an exploration of the significance of apparently random events, rather like Kate Atkinson's Life After Life, though without the alternative narratives, and there is nothing random about the range of the novel or the ideas behind it. It is also about the changes in women's lives and expectations since the 1930s, and about memory, what is remembered and what is forgotten, not least what is forgotten about the political and social struggles of the recent past.
• 
  Marigold

  I really like P. Lively – there’s a certain something about the way she writes. Big things are understated while little things are lovingly described in great detail. I see from other reviews that a lot of people feel the characters in Consequences were given short shrift in an effort to create this short multi-generational saga. For me, Lively pulled it off & it was a success. I felt like rather than creating fully fledged life stories for these characters, Lively was creating a sense of the timelessness of life, life flowing on, characters coming & going, each individual’s choices creating consequences for someone else, & though our choices may seem momentous to us, & they may BE momentous in that moment –still whatever happens, for someone life goes on, & people throughout the generations want the same things – to give & receive love, be free of war, to find enjoyable work, maybe have children, have a nice place to live. Every character is important and yet - also not - it's kind of Zen! I also love that one of her themes in this book is that love may be found in unexpected places with unexpected people! I thought it was a lovely, gentle book with, also, a wonderful sense of place—the descriptions of the cottage in Somerset in particular were just gorgeous.
• 
  Jana

  It's hard not to rate a book by the previous books by the same author. This one may deserve more than 3 of my 5 stars to award. It IS good. You should read it. But if you've not read Penelope Lively I'd start with Moon Tiger or How It All Began.
  
  I'm so glad I missed all the spoilers on this one. They abound on almost every review and synopsis. So I'll skip to the end and say: Enjoy some Lively. She can write!
  
  
  
  
  Theme: Maybe the passage of time? Don't really see where the title comes from. Hmmmm...
• 
  Amy McG

  There is something in the writing of Penelope Lively that never fails to captivate me. Perhaps it is due to the subtlety of her writing, the way in which the characters are built up so slowly and perfectly that you feel like you know all you need without any of the long soliloquies found throughout much contemporary literature. Perhaps it is because many of them are set in an England similar to the one that I myself have experienced, a past that I know of and have been told about by my grandparents, a history I can relate to. Perhaps is because she is simply a remarkable author.
  
  I particularly liked this book for the progression, the way in which the story spans three whole generations without dragging. The book is somewhat eternal, as highlighted by Lucas, when he argues that "perhaps some stories never end... aren't there other people in your story?" This book certainly has a story that I believe starts long before the first page and continues long after the book ends. It is a story of consequences, of the little moments in which history stumbles across the turning points, and I really rather enjoyed it.
• 
  Ayelet Waldman

  This book lost me in the end, although I liked it very much for a while.
• 
  Susan

  liked this novel. I always enjoy a Penelope Lively novel. This one is superbly written. The tone of the novel is soft and thoughtful, with little that jars. Considering the fact that two of the three heroines in the novels die prematurely, as does the man who's the center focus of the novel, that's an achievement. Lively has a way of muting the traumatic by focusing on ancillary things. The way one gets through periods of great sorrow or stress by cleaning the bathtub as it's never been cleaned before--or some other task that's inconsequential in the face of one’s feelings. Several parts of the book begin after a death has occurred and the reader picks up the basic fact and the details bit by bit. Each new part indicates the passage of some years and a new focus; there are no chapters, just informal breaks which also indicate smaller gaps in the action. I liked that technique. It avoids "scenes" in a way that's not covering up emotion (the way my mother discouraged "scenes") but enhancing it.
  It's the story of three generations of women, mothers and daughters, starting in the 1930ies, and their small, odd, unconventional family where the women are always at the center. The three women are distinctly different characters without being terribly different in their basic sensibilities and approaches to life. They could so easily just have been reincarnations of the same character.
  There might be a problem, I'm thinking though, in moving as quickly as Lively does from one main character to another and depending on a dead artist (who died in WWII at the end of the first section) to unify the book. The conventional generational novel is longer, with a broader focus, more events, more characters so there's more closure when one moves from one generation to the next. This novel is much sparser and can't really be compared with a generational novel. It is a bit artificial to kill off two of the women; it needs to happen for the novel to work though.
  
• 
  Anna

  A chronicle of three generations of women >> Fast forward…..
  If I was asked for an opinion about this book, I would have said - dear Penelope, please decide on time and place and move slowly. I don’t mind a couple of timelines, jumping between now and then is also good, but please don’t rush. Anything, as long as it allows you to explore the scents and shades of your characters lives. Moving at a fast forward pace is no good. You lose the detail and all the magic while rushing ahead to cover more ground. So please, please don't, ever more….
  
• 
  Jennifer

  I just finished this about 5 minutes ago so I might need to let it marinate a bit before finalizing my review but since I'm on GR I'm going to jot down my first impressions....
  
  I've got a few Livelys under my best at this point and this one may be my least fave so far. Everything about it was fine...but nothing really held my interest the way the other books did. Basically we follow a lineage through multiple generations and each of them meander along and make decisions - - which is basically life, right? I do tend to like a wee bit more plot in my novels. Perhaps
  the premise was actually the precursor to her future novel "How it All Began" - - the idea that your choices or actions create your life, impact future generations etc (which I assume is what the title means??) is similar but I thought had less impact than in HIAB where she takes an event and extrapolates how it impacts people far beyond the people directly involved.
  
  I like Lively a lot and will read more, but I would have to recommend that there are others to read before this one.
• 
  Jane

  I did not finish it. So do take that into consideration. Alas, alas, this isn't the same at all as the writer who authored "How it all began." I found it started awkwardly, but persevered. The author is at great pains to show how unique those characters she loves are and her method of showing this is to view those not like them with a certain contemptuousness. I found that unpleasant. "How it all began" had a certain humility about it which I admired. I just hope I can locate another book by this remarkable author that I can enjoy.
  
  I started paging through it about half way through and saw it was more of the same. The only character I found believable was the lovable Lucas, who didn't seem to have an exaggerated sense of his own uniqueness or importance.
• 
  Daniel

  I approached this book as a case study. What I found when I read this was an author who is beyond smart, doing interesting things with her writing, changing styles on purpose from main story to main story and all the while I wondered if she planned it this way or if it just happened and she went along for the ride.
  
  Wondered is the wrong word. Marveled...that she planned it this way.
  
  The first story is broken into wonderful "snippets" almost short stories or glimpses into England just before and during the time of the second world war. Each glimpse should be relished and enjoyed for what it brings in a sparse but beautiful vignette that can stand alone, or when strung together make for a most exquisite but sad storyline. That someone's life can be broken down into so few, small chapters is almost a crime. That said chapters can be expressed with such beauty, longing, and meaning more than makes up for it.
  
  Then, Lively does an interesting thing with the second part of the book. She abandons that style all together. It is almost as if she was switching gears to tell you about the next generation. The slower, prettier style fits the more distant past. The faster, more modern approaches encompass all that is new. All while spinning the stories around a common axis, which is the fact that the smallest decisions or choices have the greatest impact in our lives, something we never realize until much, much later.
  
  It takes an author of real skill to realize this and to trust their talent enough to pull it off. I have a lot of respect for what Penelope Lively did with this novel. I felt like it was an amazing read, worthy of all the great reviews it has received.
  
  I heard that V.S. Naipaul once claimed that there were no women authors who matched his skill. I would hold this novel as exhibit A that his opinion is erroneous.
• 
  Shane

  The stories of three generations of women told in sparse but elegant prose, Lively covers 70 years of social history in England, begining just before WWII, in this rather short novel, with characters entering and leaving the stage often. Of the three female protagonists, the grandmother Lorna and mother Molly emerge, play their roles in centre stage, and exit rather suddenly and it is left to daughter Ruth to tie the loose ends and bring the novel to its circular close.
  
  The character's lives are probably echoed in many women who lived during this period, but it is in the telling that this story comes alive. Lorna loves beneath her social class, falls for the engraver Matt, spends a few idylic years with him in a farmhouse which Matt adorns with frescos celebrating their love life, and loses him to the battle for Crete. Molly has an affair with a benevolent boss and art collector, gives birth to Ruth, but never marries her lover, because she does not love him. Ruth marries and has two children but in an age when divorce has become easier, leaves her husband and her loveless marriage to live an independant life. All three women find love eventually with other men, but not without long periods of aloneness and a dawning of self-awareness in-between. There are parallels between the women too - all of them are attracted to men of the arts, all find work in and around the arts and all are surrounded from start to end by step-grandad Lukas and his aging printing press that becomes the fulcrum of their lives.
  
  The author's style is unconventional, as tenses are juxtaposed, second and third person narratives are mixied, dialogue is intellectual and loaded with social commentary, and passive voice is used frequently - all "bad habits" that writing schools tell us to avoid - but here it seems to work - which reminds me of the newer adage, "If it works - use it!"
  
• 
  Laura

  Consequences is a thoughtful, elegantly written book that I keep thinking of as graceful. While the plot is filled with drama, spans three generations, and includes war, death, sex, and every deep and dramatic emotion possible, it nonetheless floats along without ever bogging down in sentimentality or morbidity. Lively's prose is clear and concise, and after slogging through some of too-long books recently, it was also something of a breath of fresh air.
  
  The book tells the story of a chance meeting on a park bench which leads to a life-changing romance and a very unique family; Lively explores themes of family and identity while following the lives of three members of this family. I really liked the characters and their relationships to one another, and I was extremely impressed at the way Lively managed to sketch out an entire character in just snippets of daily life and conversations (I don't think there was a single conversation in this book that was written in its entirety; mostly the narration dipped in and out, giving us the good bits).
  
  I'm definitely going to check out more of Lively's work after this.
• 
  D Dyer

  I honestly kept wanting this book to get better but it just never did. Each section features a new generation but each of the protagonist in this book felt undefined, it was difficult to remember who I was meant to be focused on as each new generation simply felt like the same person set into slightly different circumstances. I generally like experimental literature, at least when I’m in the mood for it, but this is an experiment done badly. The writing simply wasn’t powerful enough in my opinion to make the lack of character development forgivable.
• 
  Leslie

  Lovely, lovely, lovely book. Two young people go to a park in 1935 and decide to speak to one another. And everything, all the consequences of love and marriage and birth and death and grief and joy and family and work, everything flows from that one small decision they make. And along the way, people make other decisions, choose other people, and intertwining lines of story flow out from each of them. Story is everywhere. Everyone's life is made up of stories, of moments of choosing and all the consequences that flow from our choosings.
• 
  Debbie Robson

  I know I've asked this question before but I really do wonder how a big a factor our moods (or where we are at in our lives) have on whether we like or dislike a book. I picked this book up about three years ago, read the first page and was immediately disappointed with the depiction of the meeting and falling madly in love of the two main characters, Matt and Lorna. It was dealt with in such a perfunctuory fashion that I didn't want to read more. I felt cheated, put the book aside and picked up something else.
  This time (admittedly in holiday mood) I picked the book up again and read further and decided I really enjoyed the understated style, realised that it was also probably a necessary device when you are covering around 75 years in one book and kept reading. Today I just couldn't put it down. Yes, the characters could be more clearly defined. They have different jobs, live in different times but their reactions to life's cruelties seemed to be accepted in the same philosophical and stoic manner. Somehow though, this didn't seem to matter.
  Matt and Lorna really did live on and for me the great strength (and the five stars) is Lively's ability (and not many writers have this) is to depict beautifully how it feels to fall in love. How it can come on after a simple conversation and the realisation that your life would never be the same again. She is also very good at depicting the lack of real love (except for mother and child). How sometimes it just doesn't happen. Both situations and Lively's graceful passionless style made these revelations all the more powerful. Without giving anything away I absoutely loved the ending of this book. One of my favourite endings for quite some time of reading.
• 
  Beth Bonini

  The other night at dinner I had an argument with one of my most bookish friends about Penelope Lively. There is something about Lively's writing and favourite themes that appeals to me enormously. She is imaginatively obsessed with time, and those unforeseen moments when life turns on a dime -- and so am I. The whole "if I hadn't sat on this particular park bench at this particular time" my life would have taken an entirely different course. There is a strong sense that chance and accident are at least as important as any of the conscious choices that we make. My friend feels that there is something too small, too domestic, too repetitive about Lively's work -- but I seem to enjoy it for all of those reasons. There is a gentle philosophising and musing at the heart of everything she writes.
  
  This is a simple story of three generations of women: mother, daughter and granddaughter. Although dramatic things happen to the women, some of them quite tragic, there is a feeling that everything is being observed from an emotional remove. We just get glimpses, enough to see a larger pattern of connections. Perhaps it isn't a challenging read, but it is an oddly comforting one.
• 
  Dianne

  This was my first Penelope Lively book and I read it for my postal book club. I'll be reading more Penelope Lively I'm sure. The story line kept me captivated and the writing is good. I was interested in the strong female characters and the bit of history woven in. I'm not giving it more stars because it was not a particularly memorable read, enjoyable though none the less.
• 
  Annette

  I really loved this novel, not quite as good as Moon Tiger but not far off and in its own way just as ambitious. She follows the lives of three women, grandmother to granddaughter and manages to hold your attention and sympathy for all three women.
  
  The other thing Lively does in this novel is show the changes in the world and the way we live, deftly without fuss. I think we can conclude that the quality of people's lives is worsening, everything being too fast, too fragmentary, to shallow as is shown in the marriage of Peter and Ruth. Greed, money, self absorption have taken over, and allegiance to not much else other than what people want in the present moment.
  4.5 stars.
• 
  Pris robichaud

  
  Consequences: Something Logical or Naturally That Follows, 28 Jul 2007
  
  
  
  4.5 stars
  
  "Consequences: Something that logically or naturally follows from an action or condition.
  The relation of a result to its cause.
  A logical conclusion or inference." Dictonarly.com
  
  
  "The women are buffeted by events but do not break. The consequences come from their refusal to conform; which generally leads to happiness." Ruaridh Nicoll.
  
  
  Penelope Lively manages to tell a story of three generations of women, from the early 1930's to the present. The book is always emotionally full. There's nothing stingy in Lively's language. Each sentence gives the feel of conveying the story and emotions of the moment; it's describing without being fussed over. The combining of personal life and historical events is a familiar aspect of Penelope Lively's fiction In "Consequences," crucial encounters occur by sheer chance. This latest story begins in 1935, with an unhappy rich girl, Lorna, sitting weeping on a bench in St James's Park. Nearby, a young man, Matt, sketches the ducks. "Their accidental meeting will later be described as the opening of a game of consequences, from which flows a long, rich narrative." Lively's stories of the experience of love in the lives of three generations of women in one family enables her to explore the changing sceneries of English society and the role of women. Lorna and Matt and their child, Molly. Molly develops into a a beautiful young woman and has a child, at her wish, out of wedlock. Later on Molly mnarres and her life begins again. Ruth. the daughter carries on the tradition of independence and marries, has children and the natural consequences follow.
  
  'Consequences' has a great feel and story lines. For me,it falls short of developing the characters in depth. The story jumps from one decade to the next with little preparation. The prose is elegant, the plotting meticulous but unobtrusive. Some of the male characters are sketchy but the three women - in many ways, one woman seen at different times - are sensitively portrayed. Her characters' memories "are stashed away now, like reels of film, to be replayed at will." And Penelope Lively not only replays those memories, but also shows the invisible connections between her characters. Consequences reminds me of novels I have loved by the likes of the American writer Jim Harrison, with their belief that people are, on the whole, good and their struggle, noble. Harrison's stories were of hardened men battling for existence on the plains of America, while Penelope Lively sets her scene in the literary festivals of the English lands.
  
  "And "Consequences," despite its shadows, is also a joyous ever-widening dance. At its center shimmers the idea of resiliency, of the continuity of humankind as embodied in one family, shattered and reconstituted, fragile, stubborn, enduring." Nancy Kline
  
  I often speak of a novel that affected me as a journey. Penelope Lively's 'Consequence' is a return for me of the storyline that brings me great satisfaction. Her prose and her style bring me to a new place each read. A traditional novel that equates great love to great happiness.
  
  Highly Recommended. prisrob 07-11-07
  
• 
  Connie Faull

  This book is about 3 generations of pretty independent minded women, starting with Lorna in 1935 who marries outside of her class and into a very different life from that of the upper middleclass home she was brought up in. He daughter, Molly, also chooses a path which is different from what society prescribed for woman in the early 1960s, and finally Lorna's granddaughter Ruth, finds her independent spirit as she approaches her 40s. All of these women were indpendent minded in their own right for the times in which they were brought up. The author covered all 3 generations in under 300 pp. Her writing is quick and easy, yet at times I felt she got bogged down in areas with respect to "love." Much of what she wrote seemed a little too contrived and her foreshadowing always allowed you to know what was going to happen before it did.
  
  I thought this book was an o.k. read. The women in my f2f book club thought it was "excellent" however. There was some very intelligent "quips" and conversations in this book. Especially by the character of Molly. If you're looking for a light, easy read, this book is recommended.
• 
  Carl R.

  Penelope Lively won the Booker, the literary prize for writers in English I respect the most, so she must be worth reading. That was my thought when Consequences fell into my hands. As it turns out this four-generation family saga (done in 268 pages) is a rather slight work whose depth doesn’t begin to match its scope. We begin with a charming romantic scene in St. James park in the nineteen thirties, which romance carries us to a rude Somerset cottage. Then we rush on through mostly predictable relationships, deaths, births, achievements and failures, coming (again rather predictably) back to the Somerset cottage.
  Although there are a number of charming scenes and characters throughout, we never spend enough time with any of them to become fully invested. The effect is rather like viewing countries and towns from a train window. Enjoyable, but unmemorable. Certainly not Booker caliber. I guess I should go out and investigate Moon Tiger, the book that won her the prize. But I don’t think I’ll drop everything else to do it.
• 
  Mark

  I haven't read enough of Lively to know if this is always true, but in this novel, she managed to completely absorb me in the lives of three generations of an English family without ever seeming to strain herself. I can't describe too much of the detail without giving away the plot, but suffice it to say that she starts with the chance meeting of a young woman, who is chafing at the restrictions of her very proper upper class British family, and a young artist, who are immediately taken with each other, and by the end of the book, she has reconnected the granddaughter with the grandfather she never met in a provocative and hope-filled way. It's just one lovely long ride through the last 60 years of British life.
• 
  Mary Ronan Drew

  In late June I read a terrific review of Penelope Lively's Consquenses on Hogglestock, the newly-named blog that was once My Porch:
  http://hogglestock.com/2015/06/25/i-l...
  
  So I borrowed it from the library. But I was only half a dozen pages into the book when I realized I had read the book before. I looked it up and the original reading was in August of 2007. I gave it 4.5 out of a possible 5 stars.
  
  It's truly outstanding. The book made it to my list of the 5 best fiction titles of 2007 but I didn't review it. Go to Hogglestock and read Thomas' review. He will convince you to read it.
• 
  Roberta

  E' questa la funzione dei libri: offrono un punto di vista, anzi, molti punti di vista conflittuali, stimolano il pensiero, provocano fastidio e ammirazione, fanno meditare. Portano chiunque li legga lontano da sé e lo lasciano in un posto da cui non tornerà mai completamente.
  Questo libro mi ha trasportato nelle vite di tre donne, tre generazioni della stessa famiglia (via matriarcale) a Londra, dagli anni '30 a oggi.
  Affascinanti le scelte, più o meno conformiste, sicuramente ragionate e sentite, delle tre protagoniste.
• 
  Alexis

  Well written and lovely in places, but large portions felt thin to me, more like a slideshow than a story, shifting frequently from one important (and often predictable) event to the next without giving the reader time to really sink in. I wish Lively had slowed things down - lingered, gone deeper - a bit more often. As it was, I found it difficult to care about many of the characters or what happened to them.