A big shabby Victorian suburban house, the smell of raincoats and coq au vin in the hall, the six mugs for the children slung from the kitchen dresser hooks: for destructive Paul, difficult Gina, elegant Sandra, considerate Katie, clever Roger and flighty Clare, Allersmead was the perfect place to grow up. But was it? Now grown-up and off in different directions, one by one the children return to Allersmead, to their home-making mother and aloof writer father and a house that for years has played silent witness to the secrets of a family, and one particular secret of which no one speaks…
Reviews
The Times
Natalie Sandison
"Lively succeeds brilliantly in getting a hold on the climate of family life. Slowly we absorb the details that get lost in the bluster and flurry until we are so drawn in, so tightly contained in the dynamics of this one, that the end, when it comes, is simply devastating."
01/08/2009
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The Scotsman
Allan Massie
"This is a very engaging novel, continuously interesting and often moving because Lively has so thoroughly imagined her characters and writes of them with wise sympathy. It reads so easily that you might suppose it was easy to write. But this kind of novel is much harder to bring off than one packed with striking incidents. It is also, happily, more rewarding to read."
25/07/2009
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The Guardian
Joanna Briscoe
"Family Album manages to intrigue and delight, and to keep the reader captivated, racing along without obvious direction but with a very tight sense of purpose. The narrative is distanced to an extreme degree: we are reading an anthropological study of the English middle classes from the 1970s to the present, their traditions and tribal habits causing winces of delighted, uncomfortable recognition... This ... should be rated as one of her most impressive works."
08/08/2009
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The Sunday Telegraph
David Robson
"Family Album is one of those ridiculously simple, ridiculously readable novels whose artistry only becomes apparent when you put it down with a sigh of regret, having devoured it in a sitting. It is probably too low-key to make a literary splash, but more than 20 years after winning the Booker with Moon Tiger, Lively still displays an economy and an elegance that put younger writers to shame."
16/08/2009
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The Independent
Amanda Craig
"The narrow social range of her work can be maddening in novels such as The Photograph but Family Album is hugely enjoyable. Though this novel suffers from a certain lack of momentum and never develops a promising thread about the children's "cellar game", it is consistently absorbing thanks to its acute perception of character."
14/08/2009
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The Independent on Sunday
Susan Elkin
"Family Album is a very readable, well-paced novel peopled with Lively's customary immaculately observed and impeccably rounded characters. But as for the family's "dark secret", I'm afraid the reader sees it coming a mile off."
16/08/2009
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The Literary Review
Gill Hornby
"Penelope Lively is acute on the detritus and mess of domestic life: the cooking smells, the ‘foetid heaps of trainers, the windowsills on which Roger’s caterpillar collection heaved in glass jars’. Her creation of a chaotic, living family home is pitch perfect, but what she is really discussing here is the idea of the home after the family has left it, and the family when it is no longer together under one roof. "
01/08/2009
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The Daily Mail
Clare Colvin
"Lively skilfully mingles past and present, as she peels away the layers to uncover a family secret of which no one speaks... [Her] astute skewering of family relations reverberates in the mind long afterwards."
06/08/2009
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The Spectator
Matthew Dennison
"...Lively’s mastery of her material, the sureness of her touch and her unique, consistently scintillating prose raise Family Album to a higher plane. This may not be her most successful novel but there is a great deal here to admire and delight."
12/08/2009
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The Daily Telegraph
Lorna Bradbury
"As in Lively’s second volume of memoir, A House Unlocked, about her grandparents’ idyllic home in Somerset, the house in Family Album has as strong a presence as any of the characters. There are some terrific descriptions of the way in which it stows away events, preserving everything, good and bad, in one great archive... If there is a problem with the novel, it is that Lively can get so caught up in bringing to life the family dynamic that some of the minor characters feel a bit sketchy."
01/08/2009
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The Sunday Times
Lindsay Duguid
"Sympathetic and observant, Lively moves fluidly between present-tense set-piece scenes and silent monologues, placing the novel’s revelations where they will be most effective, and allowing implications — about marriage, feminism and personal ambition — to blossom slowly."
09/08/2009
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