Page 71 - Phonebox Magazine May 2009

Book Review
By Oxfam Bookshop, Olney
Making It Up by Penelope Lively
Review by Sandra Metcalf
When Will There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson
Memory and the effects of the past on the present are themes which run through most of Penelope Lively’s books. In this collection of stories these themes are joined by those of choice and contingency – the way in which we think we make choices through our lives, but how such choices are often affected by contingent events. These can be anything from a change in the weather to the outbreak of a war, and their significance is perhaps only ever appreciate with hindsight.
Penelope Lively was evacuated as a child from Egypt at the outbreak of war. What if – she had been on a different ship with a different destination? What if – as a teenager she had decided to throw caution to the winds after that Chelsea Arts Ball and ended up as a single mother? What if – she had gone to America as a post-graduate and married a totally different man?
She uses such turning points in her own life, where decisions were made which sent her in a particular direction, and then explores, in the form of a short story about someone else in a similar position, where a different decision might have taken her. The stories vary in tone and intensity but are all satisfyingly evocative and thought-provoking.
Review by Thelma Shacklady
Oxfam Book Fortnight, July 2009
Have you bought a book from Oxfam that you would like to recommend to other people?
Would you like to see your recommendation in print?
For Oxfam Book Fortnight in July, Oxfam Books and Music at Olney are running several competitions and promotions. One competition is for the best customer reviews of
books bought from Oxfam. The best reviews will be displayed in the shop and published in Phonebox Magazine, probably in August.
Entry forms will be available from the shop from the beginning of May – with some guidelines for writing reviews if you think you need them.
ORCHARD WILLS LTD
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Mirror Will £75
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Phonebox Magazine 71
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The novel begins ‘In the past’ – the heading for the first section of the book. It is here that a brutal murder occurs of a mother and two of her children, as they make their way home from a picnic. The third child manages to escape into a cornfield, with her mother’s voice ringing in her ears – ‘Run, Joanna!’
Section two is entitled ‘Today’, and that is where we meet up again with Jackson Brodie, a character who has appeared in two previous novels. We also meet Reggie, short for Regina, a sixteen-year-old girl, whose soldier- father died before she was born, a victim of so-called ‘friendly fire’. (‘Most people were out of the womb before they first encountered irony,’ Reggie said to Ms MacDonald.) We also learn that Reggie’s mother has suffered a tragic accident, and that Reggie is living alone, apart from occasional visits from her brother, Bad-Boy Billy. However, since she spends most of her time looking after Dr Hunter’s baby son and sees herself as part of that family, Reggie is content with her life. She is also keen to complete her A levels, with the assistance of Ms MacDonald, her former teacher, now retired and suffering from an inoperable brain tumour which makes her even more idiosyncratic.
Louise Monroe, now Detective Chief Inspector, is also a character from previous novels, and a former acquaintance of Jackson Brodie. She completes the trio of main characters whose lives we follow avidly, and whose stories are skilfully interwoven, leading to a dramatic climax. As always, Kate Atkinson holds the reader’s attention from the first page, and although she deals in tragic events, humour is never far away. This latest novel is as good as ever, fun to read, impossible to put down.
The books reviewed above are from Oxfam Books and Music, Olney, which sells donated books, records, CDs, tapes and music to raise money for Oxfam’s work in combating poverty around the world.