A House Unlocked

by Penelope Lively

Overview

In A House Unlocked, Whitbread Award- and Booker Prize-winning Penelope Lively takes us on a journey of her familial country house in England that her grandparents bought in 1923. As her narrative shifts from room to room, object to object, she paints a moving portrait of an era of rapid change — and of the family that changed with the times. As she charts the course of the domestic tensions of class and community among her relatives, she brings to life the effects of the horrors of the Russian Revolution and the Holocaust through portraits of the refugees who came to live with them. A fascinating, intimate social history of its times, A House Unlocked is an eloquent meditation on place and time, memory and history, and above all a tribute to the meaning of home.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780802140074
Publisher:	Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Publication date:	04/07/2003
Edition description:	First Trade Paper Edition
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

Penelope Lively is the 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.

Hometown:

London, England

Date of Birth:

March 17, 1933

Place of Birth:

Cairo, Egypt

Education:

Honors Degree in Modern History, University of Oxford, England, 1955

Table of Contents

	Preface	ix
	The Hall Chest, the Photograph Albums and the Picnic Rug	1
	The Children on the Sampler	29
	The Gong Stand, The Book of Common Prayer and the Potted-Meat Jars	53
	The Woman in White and the Boy on the Beach	81
	The Cedar of Lebanon and Erigeron karvinskianus	111
	The Sunset Painting and the Harness Room	141
	The Dressing-Room, the Nursery and the Grand Piano	165
	The Knife Rests, the Grape Scissors and the Bon-Bon Dish	193
	Acknowledgements	223
	Bibliography	225

Editorial Reviews

The British novelist Penelope Lively spent her early childhood in Egypt, but it was her school holidays at Golsoncott -- a manor house that her grandparents bought in the wilds of Somerset, in 1923 -- that shaped her life. In this slim, beguiling book, Lively describes the contents and customs of the house: its silver cupboard stocked with napkin rings; the sampler stitched by her grandmother (it featured portraits of refugee children billeted in the house during the blitz); the gong stand and the potted-meat jars. By meticulously tracing the provenance of these objects, she re-creates the life they once furnished.

New Yorker

Lively, a British novelist, has written a memoir centered on her grandparents' country home in Somerset, England. The beautifully written personal account expands beyond the house to include the historical circumstances of Europe in the first half of the 20th century, revealing the social change occurring in the English countryside, including the presence and lives of refugees. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews