METAMORPHOSIS

PENELOPE LIVELY

Fig Tree, 323pp, £20

Now 88 and, in her own words, ‘at the end of my writing life’, Penelope Lively has selected the best of a lifetime’s worth of short stories to produce this collection, titled

Metamorphosis. She has book-ended her choices with two new offerings.

Alison Kelly, in the TLS, enjoyed this ‘wonderful’ collection. The experience of change pervades the stories but ‘alongside change, a greater theme takes precedence throughout the collection: as in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the unifying focus is on love’.

Isabel Berwick, who grew up reading Lively’s novels for children, found no change in her command of story-telling. In the FT she wrote,

‘Here we find characters who want to connect with their own past’

‘Lively’s humane vision and accessible, fluid writing style is universal,’ adding ‘perhaps this collection resonates most acutely for the older reader. Here we find characters who want to connect with their own past.’ Kate Saunders, in the Sunday

Times, was delighted: her writing is always ‘sizzling with wit, irony, acute observation’. She found the stories to be ‘sometimes tragic, often very funny, with an occasional whiff of the supernatural. If there is a recurring theme, it is the pull of the past, and the various ways in which her characters are shaped by history.’ She went further: ‘Penelope Lively is a literary goddess.’ But as a Lively fan, she had one reservation: ‘The only thing I didn’t love about this book is the air of valediction, as if Lively had decided to clear out her life’s work, choosing what to keep and what to send to Oxfam.’