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  • Published: 24 September 2014
  • ISBN: 9780241966983
  • Imprint: Penguin General UK
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 240
  • RRP: $24.99
Categories:

Ammonites and Leaping Fish

A Life in Time





A memoir that addresses ageing, memory, time and a life in the 20th century, by one of our greatest writers, Penelope Lively

In this powerful and compelling 'view from old age', Penelope Lively, at eighty, reports back on what she finds. There are meditations on what it is like to be old as well as on how memory shapes us. There are intriguing examinations of key personal as well as historical moments she has lived through and her thoughts on her own bookishness - both as reader and writer. Lastly, she turns to six treasured possessions to speak eloquently about who she is and where she's been - fragments of memories from a life well lived.

  • Published: 24 September 2014
  • ISBN: 9780241966983
  • Imprint: Penguin General UK
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 240
  • RRP: $24.99
Categories:

About the author

Penelope Lively

Penelope Lively grew up in Egypt but settled in England after the war and took a degree in history at St Anne's College, Oxford. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and a member of PEN and the Society of Authors. She was married to the late Professor Jack Lively, has a daughter, a son and four grandchildren, and lives in Oxfordshire and London.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 novels include Passing On, shortlisted for the 1989 Sunday Express Book of the Year Award, City of the Mind, Cleopatra's Sister and Heat Wave. Many of her books, including Going Back, which first appeared as a children's book, and Oleander, Jacaranda, an autobiographical memoir of her childhood days in Egypt, are published in Penguin.Penelope Lively has also written radio and television scripts and has acted as presenter for a BBC Radio 4 programme on children's literature. She is a popular writer for children and has won both the Carnegie Medal and the Whitbread Award.

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Praise for Ammonites and Leaping Fish

Fascinating, lucid . . . Authority, yes; and wit, thoughtfulness, a tender attention to the natural world, an incisive but deeply humane imagination: Ammonites and Leaping Fish is full of all of these

Helen Dunmore, The Times

Like old age itself this book is not for sissies. Luckily for us Lively is one of our most gifted writers . . . This is Lively at her best

Sunday Express

A fascinating portrait not only of the author but of the times through which she has lived . . . sharp, unsentimental and ruefully funny

Daily Telegraph

Lively's memoir about age and the pleasures and pains of seniority is informative, instructive, unexpected and beautifully observed

Vogue

An elegant and thoughtful dissection of a subject few writers dare dwell on

Times Magazine

Rich in observations and recollections. It should be read slowly because there is much to invite reflection

Herald Scotland

Other brilliant women writers (Joyce Carol Oates, Joan Didion . . .) have written whole volumes on widowhood, but Penelope Lively's description of that condition is all the more affecting by being sparse . . . Will delight all those who love Lively's novels . . . It's all enthralling: autobiography in miniature

Daily Mail

A superb study of memory and of her own voyage into the ninth decade of her life . . . Lively is a compelling, vitally interested witness to time past

Helen Dunmore, Observer Books of the Year

Ammonites & Leaping Fish is powerfully consoling. Lively is certainly sagacious, her words careful and freighted. But there is girlishness here, too. Things still catch her eye, her attention. New books. Old stories. Another day for the taking

Rachel Cooke, Observer
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