Family Album by Penelope Lively

Description

Bibliographic Details

• Author: Penelope Lively
• Title: Family Album
• Publisher: ‎ Viking Books; First American Edition (October 29, 2009)
• Language: ‎ English
• Format: Hardcover w/Library Binding – 224 pages
• ISBN-10: ‎ 0670021245
• ISBN-13: ‎ 978-0670021246
• Reading age: ‎ 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher
• Item Weight: ‎ 1.05 pounds
• Dimensions: ‎ 6.3 x 1.0 x 9.3 inches
• Book Condition: Used – Very Good (Former library book; may include the markings and stickers associated from the library. May show signs of minor discoloration on page edges). 
• Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good (Mylar Library Dust Jacket)
• Edition: First American Edition

Synopsis:

All Alison ever wanted was a blissful childhood for her six children, with summers at the beach and birthday parties on the lawn at their family home. Together with Ingrid, the family au pair, she has worked hard to create a real "old-fashioned family life." But beneath its postcard sheen, the picture is clouded by a distant father, Alison's inexplicable emotional outbursts, and long-repressed secrets that no one dares mention. For years, Alison's adult children have protected her illusion of domestic perfection-but as each child confronts the effects of past choices on their current adult lives, it becomes evident that each must face the truth.

Penelope Lively is renowned for her signature combination of silken storytelling and nuanced human insights. In Family Album, lively masterfully peels back one family's perfect façade to reveal the unsettling truths.

Penelope Lively's novels of history, memory, and character have earned her a loyal readership. Like Ian McEwan's Atonement, this novel is a measured, thoughtful look at how events of the past, both small and large, seen and unseen, deeply inform character and the present. Quietly provocative and disturbing, Family Album is a highly nuanced work that showcases a master of her craft.

About the Author:

Dame Penelope Margaret Lively DBE FRSL (born 17 March 1933) is a British author of many prize-winning novels and short-story collections for both adults and children. She has twice been shortlisted for the Booker Prize: once in 1977 for her first novel, The Road to Lichfield, and again in 1984 for According to Mark. She later won the 1987 Booker Prize for her highly acclaimed novel Moon Tiger.

Her other books include Going Back; Judgement Day; Next to Nature, Art; Perfect Happiness; Passing On; City of the Mind; Cleopatra’s Sister; Heat Wave; Beyond the Blue Mountains, a collection of short stories; Oleander, Jacaranda, a memoir of her childhood days in Egypt; Spiderweb; her autobiographical work, A House Unlocked; The Photograph; Making It Up; Consequences; Family Album, which was shortlisted for the 2009 Costa Novel Award, and How It All Began.

She is a popular writer for children and has won both the Carnegie Medal and the Whitbread Award. She was appointed CBE in the 2001 New Year’s Honours List, and DBE in 2012.

Penelope Lively lives in London.

She was married to Jack Lively, who died in 1998.