Consequences, Penelope Lively
Consequences, Penelope Lively
List: $17.99 | Sale: $12.59
Club: $8.99

Consequences
A Novel

Author: Penelope Lively

Narrator: Josephine Bailey

Unabridged: 8 hr 56 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 08/20/2007

Categories: Fiction, Sagas


Synopsis

Consequences is a love-story-times-three that opens on the eve of the Second World War, with a chance meeting in St. James's Park, London. Wholly in love, Lorna and Matt leave the city for a cottage in a rural Somerset village. Their intimate life together is shattered when the war begins and by Matt's tragic death in action.

Twenty years later, their daughter, Molly, happens upon a forgotten newspaper—a seemingly small moment that leads to her first job and, eventually, a pregnancy by a wealthy man who wants to marry her but whom she does not love. But it is her own daughter, Ruth, who begins the journey that will take her back to 1941—and a redefinition of herself and of love.

Told in Lively's incomparable prose, Consequences is a powerful story of growth, death, and rebirth and a study of the previous century—its major and minor events, its shaping of public consciousness, and its changing of lives.

About Penelope Lively

Penelope Lively is the author of numerous award-winning novels, including the Man Booker Prize–winning Moon Tiger and The Photograph. Her writing has appeared in many publications, including the New York Times. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a member of PEN, and a former chairman of the Society of Authors. She was awarded the CBE in 2002.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Katie on August 28, 2017

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 grandd......more

Goodreads review by Jeanne on November 22, 2008

Boring. The entire concept of fiction is that a character's choices lead to consequences. It is how any novel is meant to move. Lively, however, decides to skip forward and try to do too much. Each generation gets replaced by the next in her narrative and as I've thought about it, I feel that the au......more

Goodreads review by Ayelet on August 27, 2014

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

Goodreads review by Amy on September 24, 2011

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......more