Consequences
A hugely satisfying and romantic novel, in Consequences Penelope Lively plots the lives of three generations of twentieth-century women.
In 1935, privileged misfit Lorna meets the love of her life. Falling for a pennyless and bohemian artist, Matt, she abandons her stuffy Kensington existence in London and moves to a rustic cottage in Somerset. A baby, Molly, is born, but the coming war takes Matt – and Lorna’s dreams – away.
Lorna’s decisions and their unforeseeable consequences come to shape the stories first of her daughter, Molly, and then her granddaughter, Ruth.
Consequences tells of three generations of women in their own twentieth-century times united by their shared experiences of love, pain, fate and happiness . . .
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Reviews
"A flawlessly constructed mini-epic that will delight."
Daily Telegraph
"Nourishing fare from a writer on sparkling form."
Daily Mail
"Penelope Lively's latest novel begins in 1935 with an unhappy rich girl sitting weeping on a bench in St. James's Park. Nearby, a young man 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 chronicling of the experience of love in the lives of three generations of women in one family enables her to explore the changing tides of English society and the role of women throughout."
Independent
"Lively conjures up rich colour and feeling so sensuously, but austerely, confining herself for the most part to simple words and taut syntax."
Times