Family Album

By: Penelope Lively

Narrated by: Josephine Bailey

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's novels of history, memory, and character have earned her a loyal legion of fans. 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.

©2009 Penelope Lively (P)2009 Tantor

Critic reviews

"With its bountiful characters and exhaustive time traveling, Lively's vivisection of a nuclear family displays polished writing and fine character delineation." ( Publishers Weekly)

One of my favorite authors

This one did not disappoint. It is a wonderfully observant story of a family in all their dysfunction and resilience. When the world seems too much, Lively is one of the writers I turn to for her sharp eye, her humor, and her humane judgment of her more or less flawed characters.

Our Family Members We Have Not Known

The book starts slowly and the English setting and English narrator voice initially put me off. As the author visits and revisits the personality of each of the six children, their parents, and the live-in governess, however, each revisitation is more penetrating and revealing. The unhappy children of this large family (by English standards) prove to be strong, independent people who are not as unhappy as they pretend. Their fear of having children seems to be their only shared characteristic. The story ends somewhat abruptly, for my taste, but I think this book is every bit as good as the author's earlier book, The Photograph.

character-driven

IF you're into plot, this probably isn't for you. I kept waiting for some big revelation or plot development that never occured. It's very well-written and mostly a character study of a family and its individual members. It looks at several different events in the life of the family through eyes of various family members. (I kept expecting the events to be revealed to be "bigger" than they actualy were).

predictable

I listened to half of the book and did not come across a single character I cared about. They were rather unlikeable and predictable, and I did not care to be a part of their dysfunction any longer.