Family Album by Penelope Lively — chinks in the idyll
To outsiders, the sprawling Edwardian villa called Allersmead seems the perfect family home. A bit ramshackle. A tad chaotic. But decidedly a place filled with parental love, family celebrations and oceans of wholesome food.
It’s the atmosphere that matriarch Alison Harper has striven tirelessly to create. In her eyes she has succeeded. “This is a real family house,” she announces proudly to a daughter’s boyfriend on his first visit to this suburban paradise. “Such happy memories — everything reminds me of something. … Real old-fashioned family life — you can’t beat it. “
Protestations made so emphatically only a few pages into Penelope Lively’s Family Album, are an alert that this might not prove to be the definitive version of the truth. That proves to be the case as the story unfolds in snapshots from the present back to the 1970s and 1980s. Lively doesn’t so much challenge Alison Harper’s version as take a gigantic cleaver to this earth mother’s account of her middle class family.
We rummage through the memories of the Harper clan as each of the six offspring take a turn at recalling their formative years. Some events have become the stuff of legend. Like the time someone (who never owned up) tore up the manuscript of their father’s latest book. And the time a birthday party ended with one girl in hospital. They also look back on the final days of their “cellar games”.
But each child remembers these events slightly differently and few of them have memories that match with Alison’s recollections. As son Roger comments after one miserable British seaside holiday when they were teenagers: “So who’s right? Who sees it all?”
Inevitably we get to discover that unreliable memories are not the only chink in the Harper idyll. There is a secret, one hidden in plain site, but until now always skirted around and never openly acknowledged. It’s not revealed in dramatic fashion nor does it stand as a major turning point in the novel. But it goes somewhat to explain why Allersmead feels “a sort of empty stage”, despite Alison’s wish that it be filled with children and grand-children?
Five of her brood have flown the nest and rarely return. Only the eldest son Paul lives at home, the problem child with a history of drug and alcohol addiction. Meanwhile his siblings zip around the world, reporting from war zones, watching catwalk parades in the fashion capitals of Europe, touring with a dance company, and saving lives in Canadian paediatric clinics.
With one exception they don’t show any interest in bearing children, putting them at the opposite end of the spectrum from Alison for whom creating a family is almost a job.
This is all she ever wanted: children, and a house in which to stow them — a capacious, expansive house. And a husband of course. And a dear old dog.
Alison is a wonderfully concocted character, a woman who cares little for world affairs or her appearance ( Laura Ashley smocks are her thing) but is assiduous when it comes to recipes for lemon chicken and ratatouille. She’s the hub of the house, the woman who welcomes the kids home from school with “a proper tea” and will stay up late at night to prepare an extra special birthday cake.
At her side throughout is Ingrid, a Scandinavian au pair who is still at Allersmead long after the children have left. Husband Charles is largely confined to the role of onlooker, the man who pays the bills and plays his part in the baby-making machine before disappearing into his study to research his latest book.
It’s quite a sad little tale in many ways but there are also plenty of smiles and opportunities to roll the eyes in disbelief, chiefly over Alison’s gushing pronouncements on the joys of parenting (she prefers to call it Mothercraft to emphasise the role of the mother) . It’s hard not to laugh when she comes out with a gem like her thoughts on the process of childbirth:
All right, it hurt a bit, but not that much, none of hers had taken long, just a final hour or so of ouch! and heave, and there you were with the dear little bundle.
Family Album is a highly readable novel. Lively captures perfectly the atmosphere of the house with its clutter of childhood drawings and art projects but also shows the underlying tensions, especially between Alison and her husband. Everyone in the Harper household, including the au pair, is given a voice either directly or mediated through an omniscient narrator. Yet Lively also stands back and lets us observe the gaps between what is said and what is unsaid, showing how the past comes to shape the present.
Family Album by Penelope Lively: Footnotes
Penelope Lively is the British author of more than 50 fictional works for children and adults. She first achieved success with children’s fiction, starting with Astercote in 1970. Her first novel for adults, The Road to Lichfield, was published in 1977 and made the shortlist for the Booker Prize. A later novel According to Mark also made it to the shortlist. She was named winner of the Booker Prize in 1987 prize for Moon Tiger, (link is to my review).
Family Album was one of the books I read for #20booksofsummer2021 . I’m counting it as book 11 in my #21in21 personal project where I am trying to read 21 books from my TBR that I acquired before 2021.
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I bought a secondhand copy earlier this year and am waiting for just the right mood and moment to enjoy it, so I found my quick skim through your review very encouraging!
At least you know what you are getting into
I was thinking, it sounds like my mother, who made a career out of bring up four boys who are now everywhere except in the city she is in. But then re-looking at the dates made me realize Alison is my generation – my children grew up in the 80s. And despite all the feminist theory, women were still the homemakers. Three of the four of us boys had (largely) stay at home wives (the fourth is a bachelor). Perhaps I should read the book.
I think the point wasn’t to criticise Alison for being a homemaker – but that she bangs on about it so much yet can’t really see how fragile a base she has built.
I thought that I had read this one as I’ve read a lot of her books, I really like her writing. I realised that I’ve not read it, so I have a treat to look forward to, thank you.
If you enjoy her writing then I’m confident this will be a pleasure to read
I don’t think I’ve ever read any of her adult books. Her children’s books were very “in” when I was a kid – the sort of thing that teachers liked you to read.
I’d never heard of her until I saw her on the list of booker prize winners. My school was very conservative – Blyton, Treasure Island, Coral island kind of reading
My primary school teachers had an absolute down on Enid Blyton – when I was about 6, one of them complained to my mum and dad that I read too many Blyton books. I ignored her!
Good for you. You can never have enough Blyton books as a cjild
Sounds interesting. Family sagas always interest me
It depends on whether I can relate to any of the characters – often I can’t but this one held me throughout because of the character of the mother.
Yes true … there has to be certain amount of connectivity
Moon Tiger was my first novel by Lively; I absolutely adored it (I’ll have to check your review to see if you felt likewise), so much so it sent me into a major “I must read everything she’s written” period. I didn’t quite achieve that, but I did make a make dent in her backlist and followed her books for quite awhile. I did enjoy Family Album, for the many reasons you’ve so aptly described (I’m afraid, however, that I thought the secret was a bit obvious) but didn’t consider it one of Lively’s stronger works. Even so, there’s always something (usually quite a lot) with Lively’s novels! Your review reminded me of how much I enjoyed her work; I can’ t think now why I stopped reading her (still, however, have lots of her books on the shelf). Some readers (well, me) are fickle, I suppose, always looking for something new . . . .
Janakay again! You just can’t shut me up! Forgot to say that I very much want to read Lively’s Oleander, Jacaranda, her autobiographical account of her childhood!
Has she stopped writing? The Wikipedia entry doesn’t have anything listed for her in recent years.
I did enjoy Moon Tiger. I’ve read only 3 books by her – that one, How It All Began and now Family Album. All three seem to use a discontinuous narrative style – its that a feature of all her work?
Thanks for the review. I’ll be on the lookout for it.
Hope you can find a copy. Mine was from a second hand shop in the US – I didn’t know much about Lively’s writing at the time but it proved to be a lucky find
Is this book written in a stream of conscious style? It lends itself to lift ordinary events and people to epic levels.
Not exactly stream of consciousness though its not a linear style either. It’s quite fragmentary at times just as people’s recollections of the past often are.
I have this in the 746 and have been meaning to get to it for ages. It sounds like my kind of thing. Great review.
I’ve had a copy for ages but thought it was time to dig it out. Now I’m hungry for more of her books