Moon Tiger - by Penelope Lively (Paperback)

About the Book

The last thoughts of a dying writer are captured in this intelligent novel by Booker Prize-winner Penelope Lively. The moving and poignant story of life as a writer, historian, and mother ends as a saga of unfufilled love.

Book Synopsis

The elderly Claudia Hampton, a best-sellign author of popular history, lies alone in a London hospital bed. Memories of her life still glow in her fading consciousnes, but she imagines writing a history of the world. Instead, "Moon Tiger" is her own history, the life of a strong, independent woman, with its often contentious relations with family and friends. At its center -- forever frozen in time, the still point of her turning world -- is the cruelly truncated affair with Tom, a British tank commander who Claudia knew as a reporter in Egypt during World War II.

Review Quotes

Praise for Moon Tiger

"A superb and unusually gifted writer . . . [She has] an extraordinary facility with words, structural and narrative daring, and imagery so apposite it can make your heart ache. " -- The Guardian

"A powerful, moving and beautifully wrought novel about the ways in which lives are molded by personal memory and the collective past." -- Boston Globe
"Lively belongs to a chort of brilliant female novelists who defined the fiction culture of postwar Britain . . . [Moon Tiger is] an elegant disquisition on memory, identity, age, love, and regret." -- Financial Times
"Emotionally, Moon Tiger is kaleidoscopic, deeply satisfying. The all too brief encounter between Claudia and Tom will surely rate as one of the most memorable of contemporary fictional affairs. This is one of the best novels I have read for years." -- The London Sunday Telegraph
"It pulls us in; it engages us and saddens us. It is also unexpectedly funny . . . It leaves its traces in the air long after you've put it away." -- The New York Times Book Review
"Lively's ability to bring her characters and the world she inhabits into full technicolor is beautiful . . . A unique book." -- Lemn Sissay, Golden Booker Prize Judge