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    Moon Tiger
    Moon Tiger
    Moon Tiger
    Audiobook7 hours

    Moon Tiger

    Written by Penelope Lively

    Narrated by Ruth Urquhart

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    Winner of the Man Booker Prize

    Penelope Lively won Britain's prestigious Booker Prize for this deeply moving, elegantly structured novel. Elderly, uncompromising Claudia Hampton lies in a London hospital bed with memories of life fluttering through her fading consciousness. An author of popular history, Claudia proclaims she's carrying out her last project: a history of the world. This history turns out to be a mosaic of her life, her own story tangled with those of her brother, her lover and father of her daughter, and the center of her life, Tom, her one great love found and lost in war-torn Egypt. Always the independent woman, often with contentious relationships, Claudia's personal history is complex and fascinating. As people visit Claudia, they shake and twist the mosaic, changing speed, movement, and voice, to reveal themselves and Claudia's impact on their world.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHighbridge Company
    Release dateSep 19, 2018
    ISBN9781684416677
    Author

    Penelope Lively

    Penelope Lively is a novelist, short story writer and author of children's books. Her novels have won several literary awards including the Booker Prize for Moon Tiger in 1987, the Carnegie Medal for The Ghost of Thomas Kempe in 1973, and the Whitbread Award for A Stitch in Time in 1976.

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    Reviews for Moon Tiger

    4/5

    589 ratings43 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Talk about a slow burner. For some reason, I plodded on through the patchy plot and came out with a winner. This book really kicks into gear just over half way through.Claudia is the story. She narrates it, mostly, and is telling it from her rest home bed. Alongside her telling her history of the world that is. She is a writer and an outwardly successful and capable person. It is fitting for someone like her to tackle a writing project as complex as "the history of the world" while ill and in decline. She is like that.She also has a personal story to tell, one of the usual trials and tribulations of life and love. And also some very surprising and moving events which end up shaping her as a person, more than even she would like to admit. Through being a war correspondent in Cairo, her close relationship with her brother, her casual marriage and her disdain for the uninteresting we learn enough about Claudia to figure out that she is eventually thoroughly likeable. And all written so cleverly.Lively has a distinctive writing style here, in that other characters throw in their perspective in a scene where the voice is all Claudia. A snippet here and there from someone elses voice shows so neatly how it is in life- when what happens is in the eye of the beholder.I am so glad I put in the time early on to read large-ish sections at a time. It really kept things moving and set me up for the page-turning second half.
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed [Penelope Lively]]’s [Moon Tiger]. In the last decade I’ve been put offreading books about infirm and dying women going over their past lives. But I liked the sound of the MC Clara and the way Lively uses her memories to “document” Clara’s history of the world. I liked Clara’s unconventional ways and acerbic wit.The novel is in a way, a history of world though it ends in the late twentieth century. I can’t help wondering what Clara’s take would be of the twentieth century. Somewhat like mine I expect.
    • 5/5
      A history of the world, yes. And in the process, my own.

      Soaring, searing, essential.
    • 5/5
      A beautifully written account of how history shapes us and how we shape our own histories. I loved this. It reminds me of The Stone Diaries, The English Patient, and The Blind Assassin.
    • 4/5
      I absolutely loved this book. Claudia is at the end of her life and decides to "write" a history of the world in her head while lying in the hospital. She muses on her life and her relationships. Among these are a brief love affair during WWII, an intimate relationship with her brother, and a tense relationship with her daughter. There are lots of insights into living along the way. I found the whole thing very well done. Highly recommended.
    • 4/5
      Hailed as a forgotten classic, I hope this Booker winner finds more new readers like me. A woozy story about love and ageing, I’d recommend this to anyone and look forward to making my way though more of Lively’s work.
    • 4/5
      Claudia Hampton's life is drawing to a close, drifting softly away to smoke and ash like a burning mosquito repellent coil, the Moon Tiger of the title...the symbol of a brief intense period of her life when love was the glowing eye at its center. As Claudia slips in and out of consciousness her mind is occupied with "writing" her autobiography. Her memories and musings of past affairs and other attachments are interspersed with vignettes from the point of view of some of the players in her story. Claudia was a war correspondent; a writer of popular history; an independent, not entirely likeable person whether seen from her own perspective or that of family, lovers or friends. And yet, her life makes quite compelling reading. At the end, we regret her failed relationships, the loss of her one great passion, and the falling of that last bit of ash only slightly less than she does herself.
    • 4/5
      Claudia looks back on her life as she is dying and remembers her intense relationship with her brother Gordon, and the love of her life Tom, who was killed in WWII. She also remembers her daughter Lisa, whom she found boring and left to be brought up mostly by her grandmothers; Jasper, Lisa's father, who was not the love of her life; Sylvia, Gordon's wife, who could not compete with Claudia in any arena; and Laszlo, a Hungarian refugee, whose function in the story escapes me - the son she wishes she had?I enjoyed this novel very much, although Claudia was hard to sympathize with (except in the heart-breaking Tom sections). Interesting about the war in Egypt and the difference between history as it is experienced and as it is recorded.
    • 5/5
      Moon Tiger is a brand of mosquito coil that, like life, burns briefly before turning to ash. Claudia Hampton is 76, lying in a hospital bed, dying of cancer and reflecting on her past. A former newspaper correspondent and writer of popular history, she is writing a book: “ A history of the world, yes. And in the process, my own. The Life and Times of Claudia H. The bit of the twentieth century to which I’ve been shackled, willy-nilly, like it or not. Let me contemplate myself within my context: everything and nothing. The history of the world as selected by Claudia; fact and fiction, myth and evidence, images and documents.” She takes a “kaleidoscopic view”, selecting scenes randomly from her childhood after the First World War, her time as a correspondent in Egypt during World War II, to the present day where, after an eventful life, she finds herself simply an elderly woman being treated patronizingly by the nurses: “Was she someone?”, one of them asks. She acknowledges that the past is subjective, shaped by the words that recount it and gives us the same events from other points of view. A complex and not always sympathetic character, Claudia is beautiful, intelligent, independent, and unconventional. She and her brother have an unnaturally close relationship. She lacks in maternal feeling, refusing to be called “Mummy” and leaving her daughter to be raised by her grandmothers. She never marries the father although they maintain an on-again, off-again relationship for years. Claudia is at her most sympathetic during a short-lived romance in Egypt during the war. The book is somewhat slow paced but well-written and interesting.
    • 3/5
      Evocative portrait of 1940s wartime Cairo and Egyptian desert eventually winds back to Montezuma (Cuauhtemoc?) and Cortez in Mexico.Claudia, the main character, works as a newspaper correspondent unaffected deeply by the war until she falls in love with Tom.The war then becomes real for her because she has someone to watch and wait for.This short lived romance offers a brief respite in the endless Claudia and brother Gordon hostile/forgiving repartee and love lust.It was unfair to either of their eventual spouses that these two rude and insufferably self centered persons should marry.The book, like so many more recent novels, offers many dimensions of unlikeable characters for whom it is nearly impossible to feel a connection.It's no wonder that adult readers are drawn to Harry Potter.
    • 5/5
      Claudia is dying, looking back on her long and eventful life. She's prickly, not much of a mother. She's always been a woman who's done what she wanted. She thinks about history, people she's loved, people who were part of her life and have become part of her. Some relationships were difficult or unconventional but all part of life's rich tapestry. Her memories of childhood, war years when she was a correspondent in Egypt, motherhood, her writing career - all are vivid and evocative. I loved this book.
    • 5/5
      Moon tiger is a brilliant novel by the award-winning author Penelope Lively. In 1987, she was awarded the Booker Prize for her novel Moon tiger. Penelope Lively was born in Cairo, Egypt and spent her early youth, including the years of the Second World War there, from 1933 to 1945. She recorded her early memories of life in Cairo and Alexandria in her memoir, Oleander, Jacaranda. A childhood perceived (1994). Moon tiger is also describes that period in Egypt, but by a protagonist who is at least 20 years older.In Moon tiger, Claudia Hampton, a historian, passing in and out of consciousness remembers her life and times. The narrative is interspersed with fragments of a book about the history of the world, which Hampton had been working on. Thus, the Second World War is fought against the setting of ancient history. This perception is stronger in the mind. As E.M. Forster in Aspects of the novel described the authors congregating, imagining: the English novelists as seated together in a room, a circular room, a sort of British Museum reading-room – all writing their novels simultaneously. Likewise, Claudia Hampton's perception of history is circular, rather than linear: she cannot "write chronologically of Egypt" (p. 80) In Claudia's mind everything is there, simultaneously.This motive is worked out throughout the novel, along the lines of Claudia's life. Her love for Tom, their still-born child, her marriage marriage with Jasper and her daughter Lisa. As she passes back and forth into consciousness, she passes back and forth into episodes of history, world history as well as her life history, which coincide in Egypt, as later, personal and world history intersect in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. The idea of the circularity of history is reflected in the circular shape of the "moon tiger", the slowly burning coil.Moon tiger is a beautifully conceived novel, written in a fine style, close to the prose style of Iris Murdoch. The main idea of the circular, or instantaneous nature of history is exquisite, and in making the main character in the novel a historian, the novel offers ample material for the reader to ponder the relation and differences between time and history.
    • 4/5
      Let me preface this review by saying that I have read two books by Penelope Lively, Family Album and How It All Began. She is one of my favourite authors ,based on those two books, but sadly [Moon Tiger ] disappointed me. Perhaps my expectations were too high, or perhaps she has refined her writing over time. The characters in Moon Tiger were not well developed and I found them difficult to like , or even have much of a sense of them. Claudia, the main character, around whom everyone seems to rotate, struck me as a narcissist . Claudia says about herself at about 80 % into my kindle, " The life of an attractive woman is different from a plain one....when I was eight years old I realized I was pretty - from that moment onwards a course was set. Intelligence made me one kind of being; intelligence allied with good looks made me another. " She seems to judge everyone that she meets on that basis, and none measures up to Claudia, save perhaps her lover, Thomas and her brother Gordon. Claudia resents her brother's wife , Sylvia, essentially on the basis that she is plain and plump and also not deemed intelligent by Claudia. I suppose it is possible Claudia might have resented any wife of her brothers, due to Claudia's relationship with her brother. Jasper, her on and off lover, comes and goes as Claudia wishes or needs him. Their daughter, Lisa, is mainly an inconvenience to Claudia, and Lisa is quickly shipped away to live with her grandmothers. Thomas, her one "true love", well, suffice it to say that love and war often lead to tragedy. I have such a negative opinion of Claudia that I have trouble thinking that any relationship that she had could last for any amount of time.I felt that Lively could have fleshed out the the characters so that a reader could feel some sort of connection or sympathy to a character, but Lively failed to do that. I wished I could have know Claudia better, so as to understand her , as well as the rest of the characters, but it was not to be. Lively did a wonderful job with shifting time, narrators, and her use of language is beautiful. But for me, I was left with a feeling of shallow impressions of both the characters and the places that Claudia interacted with. On the plus side, I am keen to read Lively's memoir, Dancing Fish and Ammonites: A Memoir. Perhaps that will give me more insight into [Moon Tiger] . I hope so!3.5 stars
    • 4/5
      Claudia Hampton is a beautiful, famous writer, old now, dying in a hospital. The nurses tend to her with quiet condescension, but she is unfazed, quietly plotting her greatest work :a history of the world, and by this she means her own.Claudia is not necessarily a likable woman. I wondered throughout the story how she would have fared if she had been any less than beautiful? But that hardly matters. I loved this book for the amazing prose and the mosaic storytelling, effortlessly switching from present to past, exquisitely shifting from one point of view to another, the personal details amidst the vastness of history. There is her adored brother, Gordon; Jasper, the charming, playboy lover; Lisa, her sadly conventional daughter; and her one great love, a soldier found in the blowing sands of wartime Egypt. The story of Claudia's life is indeed masterfully told in this Booker Prize Winner. Here are a few of my favorite Claudia quotes (I think I used a half of tin of those Book Darts!):"Shall it or shall it not be linear history? I've always thought a kaleidoscope view might be an interesting heresy. Shake the tube and see what comes out. Chronology irritates me. There is no chronology inside my head. I am composed of a myriad Claudias who spin and mix and part like sparks of sunlight on water." (page 2--Yup, smitten already, I was!)"If feminism had been around then I'd have taken it up, I suppose; it would have needed me." (page 14--Did I mention she was arrogant?)We will win the war, says her true love. "Not because the Lord's intervention or because justice will prevail but because in the last resort we have greater resources. Wars have little to do with justice. Or valor or sacrifice or the other things traditionally associated with them...War has been much misrepresented, believe me. It's had disgracefully good press." (page 102)And one from Gordon for good measure: " 'Mad opportunists,' says Gordon. 'Tito. Napoleon. That's not real history. History is the grey stuff. Products. Systems of government. Climates of opinion. It moves slowly. That's why you get impatient with it. You look for spectacle.' " (page 186)Definitely recommended! Four stars.
    • 5/5
      Lively presents an intimate portrait of a fiercely independent woman, intelligent and adventurous, as she reviews the world from the uncompromising perspective of her own life. I loved the way memory was represented as simultaneity of events - and how Lively shows us the truth of other people's perspectives as well. Wonderful writing.
    • 4/5
      In Moon Tiger, historian Claudia Hampton is lying on her deathbed reflecting on her past, though she chooses to call it a word history. This is probably meant to be somewhat ironic—Claudia has a peculiar sense of humour and most definitely has her very own way of looking at things, as she considers we each have our very unique experiences of events (a point on which I completely agree with her). She reflects on the nature of history and time, on whether they are linear and her thoughts bounce around very much in a non-linear fashion to her childhood and the competitive relationship with her brother Gordon; to an on-and-off lover with Russian roots called Jasper with whom she had a daughter—mostly estranged—called Lisa; to another lover, much dearer to her, lost during WWII, called Tom; to a young refugee she helped called Laszlo. These various people come visit her in the hospital where she is lying and drifting in and out of consciousness, those no longer living visit her in thought as she reflects back on the various relationships she's had with them. The mother who was distant. The daughter who was colourless, the lover in Egypt whom she had hopes to marry, tragically lost and forever cherished in memory. The brother with whom no other man could ultimately compete. All these reflections seen from the perspective of a woman who has always had an independent and strong spirit, who has always done things in her own way and has never sought approval, not from her mother or her lovers or her daughter. A woman who became a war journalist and travelled into the Egyptian dessert when women were not allowed to do so. A woman who devoted her life to her art, to her writing.All this should have fascinated me, should have pulled me in. It all made for an excellent story, I could see that objectively, I could also see that Lively was an excellent writer and knew how to put together words beautifully, yet I felt this wasn't written for me. Hard to explain really, but at no point was I able to connect with this book, and my greatest interest was in looking at the number of minutes left in the ebook on my Kindle app, which I think is rather telling. Maybe it was just the wrong timing. Or maybe, this being the second Lively book I failed to connect with, I just don't 'get' her. I'll give her one more try, then I'll decide.
    • 5/5
      I loved this novel! Seventy-six-year-old Claudia contemplates "the potency of life" from her death bed. She sardonically states her intention to write a history of the world and, instead, tells the history of her life. Her life is, of course, a reflection of (part of) the history of the world, and this narrative provides a mirror in which to view the terrible insignificance of any particular life in the context of the whole of human existence. Fate, destiny, self-determination. Connection, isolation, aloneness-in-intimacy. Love, loss, death, grief. It's all here, beautifully examined through Lively's remarkable prose. Claudia is not an entirely sympathetic protagonist and that is part of Lively's point. Claudia herself names her own ambition and striving as key players in the disappointment of her life. But, on a larger level, the vicissitudes of fate or luck, the time into which one is born, the context of place in which one finds oneself -- all determines the path of one's life and there is only so much truth to the absurd notion that "destiny is what one makes of it." "But no one likes the idea of chance, so they play games with language and talk about miracles instead." The power of language and the role it plays in defining truth, creating meaning: this is also a theme throughout this novel. And of course there is love. Love, a word that is "overstretched" and "cannot be made to do service for so many different things -- love of children , love of friends, love of God, carnal love and cupidity and saintliness." My library copy of Moon Tiger is littered with post-it flags but there is no way to fully capture the scope of the novel's emotional field. I experienced brief moments of boredom but it's the joy that I will remember.
    • 4/5
      The power of language. Preserving the ephemeral; giving form to dreams, permanence to sparks of sunlight. Claudia's ambitions drive her to recount a history of the world and in doing so she will also share with us the story of her life. It is a story of the events that have shaped her into the person she is today. It is also more importantly a story of the people who have come and gone, drifted in and out, shared and taken a portion of essence that is Claudia. It is a truth of the world as she is and the delicate tension between how the world shapes us and how we in turn shape the world we live in.This Man Booker Prize winner is undoubtably a beautiful piece of writing. It is neither rushed nor frivolous. It is methodical, contemplative, intentional, and Lively demonstrates her gift of poetic expression with a deft hand. My only struggle? For all the beautiful writing and my awe of her talent, I just couldn't connect with Claudia, or any of the characters for that matter. I always felt like they were just outside my reach, a bit standoffish, and ultimately unconnected. Ambivalence towards the character in a story is death to a reader. I will most likely seek out other Lively books because she is a talented writer and hopefully this was just a one time issue and not a theme I will come across with all her books. Recommended for the sheer force of her writing.
    • 4/5
      Ik begrijp niet waarom dit boekje nergens in toplijstjes terug te vinden is. Het kreeg wel de Bookerprijs in 1987 (maar dat was nog de tijd voor de grote hypes), maar daarna bleef het vrij stil, terwijl dit eigenlijk toch wel een pareltje is. Misschien komt het omdat het verhaal zelf eerder een hoog stationsroman-gehalte heeft: dat van een vrijgevochten vrouw, Claudia Hampton, die op haar sterfbed terugblikt op haar bewogen leven en met vooral een korte, vergeefse passionele liefde als centrale as. Ook de omslagillustratie van mijn editie lijkt een hoog pulpgehalte uit te stralen. Maar vergis je niet: dit is wel degelijk een bijzonder interessant, zelfs moeilijk boek, dat heel veel vraagt van de aandachtige lezer, maar ook veel teruggeeft. Deze recensie kan dat onmogelijk recht doen.In de eerste plaats is het het verhaal van een vrijgevochten vrouw die heel eigenzinnig in het leven staat, en haar eigen onconventionele keuzes maakt, frontaal ingaand tegen wat haar omgeving en de maatschappij van haar verwacht, dat gaat dan zowel om persoonlijke (ze heeft een af- en aan-relatie met de vader van haar kind; ze weigert de gewone moederrol op te nemen) als professionele aspecten (ze brengt het tot oorlogscorrespondent, schrijft historische boeken die de academische -mannelijke- historici tegen de borst stuiten). Lively probeert daarbij haar personage absoluut niet een heldenrol toe te dichten, integendeel Claudia komt best onsympathiek over. Ten tweede illustreert dit boekje knap de verwevenheid tussen een individueel leven met de wereldgeschiedenis. Claudia filosofeert constant over haar (onbeduidende) plaats in de hele geschiedenis. Mensen bevatten op zich de erfenis van de hele kosmologische geschiedenis, maar tegelijk staan ze er zo ver van af, voelen ze er helemaal geen verbondenheid mee. Zeker als je dan kijkt naar de "officiële" geschiedschrijving, die lijkt het essentiële juist te verdoezelen. In die zin is het werk ook een postmoderne bezinning op de relatieve waarde van naar de geschiedenis te kijken (alles is verhaal, er zijn alleen maar persoonlijke verhalen).In dezelfde lijn wordt er ook ingezoomd op de subjectieve natuur van ervaringen (ook die van tijd) en op de problematische relatie tussen taal en werkelijkheid. Lively plaatst zich daarmee op en top in de postmoderne lijn van bijvoorbeeld een Julian Barnes of Graham Swift. Nog het meest bewondering heb ik voor de zin voor nuance en dosering die Lively aan de dag legt. Claudia is best een complex personage, dat gaandeweg ontdekt dat de drijvende kracht achter haar leven haar competitie met en aantrekking tot haar broer Gordon is. Ook het liefdesverhaal wordt op een heel delicate manier gebracht: haar ene passionele liefde met de soldaat Tom, in Caïro tijdens de tweede wereldoorlog, en de dramatische wending als Tom sneuvelt, hebben natuurlijk een enorme impact op haar leven, maar toch weet Lively de val te vermijden van een te sentimentele behandeling van dit drama; ook Claudia weet in haar lange leven na die affaire de episode zijn plaats te geven. Dat getuigt van een enorm gevoel voor levenswijsheid. De sterfscene aan het slot is trouwens een van de mooiste die ik ooit gelezen heb.Kortom, dit boekje is een kleinood om te koesteren.
    • 5/5
      A beautiful piece of writing.
    • 5/5
      My Sunday mornings are filled with the dawn sky, a cup of tea, the sounds of birds at the feeders, and The New York Times Book Review. The first feature in the review I look for is “By the Book” – usually an interview with an author who has a new book or won a prize. Recently, the column featured Alice Hoffman. The most interesting question in this series is the interviewees “favorite overlooked or under-appreciated writer.” Hoffman mentioned Penelope Lively, so I decided to read Moon Tiger, Lively’s 1987 Man Booker Prize-winning novel. According to her website, Penelope was born in Cairo, Egypt. She came to England at the age of twelve and went to boarding school in Sussex. She subsequently read Modern History at St. Anne's College, Oxford. Lively now has six grandchildren and lives in London. She has written 20 novels along with several works of non-fiction and a whole shelf of children’s books.Moon Tiger is the story of Claudia Hampton, who lies in a bed and passes in and out of consciousness. She has written historical works and decides she will write a history of the world. The novel alternates between lucid moments, plans for the history, and remembering her visits to those places. When doctors, nurses, her daughter, Lisa, or her sister-in-law, Sylvia, stop by for visits, she chats a bit but then falls asleep. She delineates the chapters of her book, but she always slides toward recalling visits to those places while a correspondent during World War II. Interestingly enough, these “out-of-consciousness” moments shift between first and third person accounts. The “History of the World” slowly devolves into a “History of Claudia.”I found these changes in point of view a bit disconcerting at first, but once I became accustomed to them, the novel carried me along to Egypt. From that point on, I could hardly put it down. Claudia has some disdain for Sylvia. Lively writes, “She has given little trouble. She has devoted herself to children and houses. A nice, old-fashioned girl, Mother called her, at their third meeting, seeing quite correctly through the superficial disguise of pink fingernails, swirling New Look skirts and a cloud of Mitsouko cologne spray. There was a proper wedding, which Mother loved, with arum lilies, little bridesmaids and a marquee on the lawn of Sylvia’s parents’ home at Farnham. I declined to be matron of honour and Gordon got rather drunk at the reception. They spent their honeymoon in Spain and Sylvia settled down to live, as she thought, happily ever after in North Oxford” (23). I detected a note of jealousy, because Claudia and Gordon were rather close.So, I have another check mark on my journey through the Man Booker Prize Novels, and I continue to believe this prize represents the best literary fiction. Alice Hoffman was correct. Penelope Lively is most definitely under-appreciated, and Moon Tiger is a great example of her work. I have one more of her novels, and then … but you know what I am going to say. 5 stars --Jim 3/7/14
    • 5/5
      "Chronology irritates me. There is no chronology inside my head ... The pack of cards I carry around is forever shuffled and reshuffled; there is no sequence, everything happens at once." (Ch 1)Claudia Hampton, 76-year-old English woman, historian, and war correspondent, is terminally ill. Fading in and out of consciousness, she determines she will write a history of the world with her life as the blueprint. Her first memories are of her father, who lost his life to WWI in the summer of 1920. Claudia’s “history” directs the novel back and forth in time, from this point in 1920 to post WWII. Her readers travel with her to India, Egypt, Hungary, Mexico, and beyond – through historical events, and, more importantly, through Claudia’s life, livelihood, and loves – “subordinating history to her own puny existence." (Ch 3)As Claudia’s life plays out against contemporary history, I found myself fascinated with her relationships. Her brother, Gordon, is, by turns, best friend, rival, and even lover. Tom, the English captain stationed in Cairo, her one true love – alas, great loves and war make tragic history. Later there is Jasper, a well connected young man and on-and-off lover, with whom Claudia has a turbulent relationship, and her only child. There’s Lazlo, too, the sensitive Hungarian college student, and something of a surrogate son. And Lisa, always a disappointment to her mother: Claudia looking for her own alter ego in her daughter, and Lisa looking for something else entirely. Of her relationship with her brother in their youth, Claudia recollects:"Incest is closely related to narcissism. When Gordon and I were at our most self-conscious – afire with sexuality and egotism of late adolescence – we looked at one another and saw ourselves translated … We confronted each other like mirrors, flinging back reflections in endless recession. We spoke to each other in code. Other people became, for a while, for a couple of contemptuous years, a proletariat. We were an aristocracy of two." (Ch 11)Lively is impressive in Moon Tiger. Not only does the narrative move back and forth in time, sometimes from sentence to sentence, but it is narrated from multiple points of view, all without missing a beat. I’m left pondering whether who we are dictates the course of history, or whether history determines who we are – it’s both I suspect, though I’m not sure in what measure. And Lively’s language is so beautiful. The novel is full of sentences which call on all of the senses to participate: "The smoke that Claudia exhales mingles with the yellow shafts of sunlight and hangs there, a soupy churning density in the clean air of the wood." (Ch 4)Highly recommended.
    • 4/5
      Here is the summary of Moon Tiger: it is a 76 yr old woman’s reflections of her life as she lies on her deathbed. Even if she had an interesting life (which Claudia did indeed), the premise is still bo-ring! But the catch is that one doesn’t read Moon Tiger for the story. Instead, one reads it for the writing and technique—this is a book for literature lovers. Claudia is a feisty and sometimes abrasive character that some readers won’t warm to, but I rather liked her determination and independence. Mostly though, what I really liked is her narrative voice, whether she’s speaking in the first person or being described in the third. The narrative point of view is what makes this novel special. Many scenes are told two or three times, from different viewpoints, some of which Claudia wasn’t aware of. I also loved how Lively subtly repeats details that seem insignificant yet symbolize the important points of the story—for example, the moon tiger of the title, which is a mosquito coil that burns down while Claudia lies in bed with her lover (and doesn’t protect her from coming down with malaria fever anyway). I didn’t fully embrace the book, however. About a third of the way through, Claudia shares her memories of her time in Egypt as a journalist during WWII. This is the pivotal point in her life, but after 30 pages of it, I put Moon Tiger aside and read three other books. When I picked it up, I went back to where Lively had lost me and started again. Part of it might be that I’ve read my fill of WWII stories, but even knowing this section was important, I didn’t enjoy the book again until she went back to life in Europe. I also found her WWII lover’s diary at the end pretty boring. I trust this is just my aversion to WWII stories, and won’t have anything to do with other reader’s tastes. Despite finding the book uneven, I still think it was worthy of the Booker Prize in 1987. Recommended for: fiction writers, who need to study her point of view techniques, literature lovers and people who want to read the Booker Prize winners, and readers who like non-linear, subtle novels. I look forward to reading more from Penelope Lively.
    • 4/5
      I loved this book. It’s engaging, thoughtful, beautifully written. It’s a woman’s life, written in her head as she lies dying, and she’s a wonderful character.
    • 3/5
      No rating because I am not yet sure how I feel about this book. Well written it is but I can't help thinking I've read another story about a strong woman who loses the love of her life somewhere in the Sahara during World War II. In fact, it was central to the movie version, wasn't it? Hmmm.
    • 4/5
      We were supposed to read this for my book club and I didn't, but I finally picked it up this weekend.
      It was such a short easy read that I'm a bit surprised how much it's stuck with me. I keep thinking about it like you do when you've seen a really good movie.
      Also: Laszlo! Love him.
    • 5/5
      Talk about a slow burner. For some reason, I plodded on through the patchy plot and came out with a winner. This book really kicks into gear just over half way through.Claudia is the story. She narrates it, mostly, and is telling it from her rest home bed. Alongside her telling her history of the world that is. She is a writer and an outwardly successful and capable person. It is fitting for someone like her to tackle a writing project as complex as "the history of the world" while ill and in decline. She is like that.She also has a personal story to tell, one of the usual trials and tribulations of life and love. And also some very surprising and moving events which end up shaping her as a person, more than even she would like to admit. Through being a war correspondent in Cairo, her close relationship with her brother, her casual marriage and her disdain for the uninteresting we learn enough about Claudia to figure out that she is eventually thoroughly likeable. And all written so cleverly.Lively has a distinctive writing style here, in that other characters throw in their perspective in a scene where the voice is all Claudia. A snippet here and there from someone elses voice shows so neatly how it is in life- when what happens is in the eye of the beholder.I am so glad I put in the time early on to read large-ish sections at a time. It really kept things moving and set me up for the page-turning second half.
    • 5/5
      An absolutely brilliant book. A fabulous story and a wondrous meditation on history. Claudia is a fascinating character. She is her own person. There are no 'shoulds' in her world, and I admire her for that. I love the non-linear structure and the way that Lively shows us the same event from more than one viewpoint (often three).
    • 3/5
      This book won the Booker Award, but I didn't like it because I couldn't stand the main characters (very self centered, cold hearted, controling, rude) until after Claudia met Tom and learned more about love and caring about someone besides herself and about being loved and feeling secure. I still didn't like her very much because she didn't change fundamentally and still her abysmal version of mothering. The narrative skips from place to place, era to era, and character to character. Such a challenge is supposed to make a book more three dimensional, but this just made it harder to read. It does have good perceptions of aging: how it feels and what it is like.
    • 5/5
      Sheriji recommended this book to me and I'm grateful to her. It's a story about a woman reflecting on her life as she prepares to die. She has had a special life-long relationship with her brother and had another important relationship with a man who died in the war. My own sister is preparing to die at the moment so the story had particular significance for me. Nonetheless, I reckon many would agree that this is one of her better novels. The woman's life story is unusual for the era but I found it quite believable.