A delightful surprise. A very clever book. Excellent. ( )

Stella is recently retired from her career as an anthropologist, in which she studied societies both in the UK and in more “exotic” climes. When she moves to a cottage in a rural village, she can’t help analyzing the people and their social norms. She learns a great deal through casual conversation with the shop owner and the postman, and has ample opportunity to observe the troubled family that lives just down the lane. Richard, the widowed husband of her university friend Nadine, lives nearby. He seeks her company and offers unsolicited advice about assimilating into the community, but Stella is fiercely independent and keeps him at arm’s length. Not surprisingly, she remains somewhat apart from village life.

Stella’s memories -- of the time at university with Nadine, her career, and romantic relationships -- often occupy her thoughts, and serve to fully develop Stella’s character. The narrative also shifts periodically to the family down the lane, and a situation that is clearly escalating behind closed doors. The problem is, the reader can see what’s coming, which lessens the dramatic effect of the event when it occurs. Penelope Lively is best at character development and creating complex linkages between characters and events. There’s just not enough of that in this novel. It’s a good solid read, but not exceptional. ( )

Discerning view of life in a small Somerset village. Retired academic chooses to ruralize and ends up somewhat cut adrift, having to fit into some dysfunctional village lives. Very strange choice for a retirée who had travelled extensively and enjoyed (apparently) a respected career. Perhaps there was a context that I didn't quite grasp. Was Penelope Lively illustrating what it is like to age and have to change societies as you grow older? ( )

(8.5) ( )

Basically about a retired woman anthropologist, unmarried, who comes to
live in a Somerset village. There are many flashbacks, in particular to her
career in anthropology, and the contrast between living in the communities that were her fieldwork and the Somerset community. There are also flashbacks to the heroine and her best friend as a pair
of woman undergraduates at Oxford, man-hunting - one of whom deliberately chooses her essay subject in order to be able to use the library where the student she fancies will go.
All themes also treated by Barbara Pym. ( )