Moon Tiger

by Penelope Lively

This novel, for which the author received the Booker Prize, is one of many written by Penelope Lively .  It is a complex work, with multiple narrators and shifts in time, sometimes in flashbacks, sometimes in the present.  The main character, Claudia, is lying in a nursing home, terminally ill with cancer, and looks back over her life from her childhood until the recent past.  Through Claudia, the author expresses her interest in history as a concept that is all-encompassing and at the same time somehow futile:  “History is death, disorder, and muddle and waste.”  (A quote noted by Anne)

The character of Claudia evoked a lot of commentary in the group.  The consensus was that she was not a likeable person but had to be admired for her strong character and fearlessness.  Most of us thought the love story between her and the doomed British officer was the only element which made Claudia more sympathetic, but as some remarked, would they have stayed together if he had lived?

Other aspects of Claudia’s character, in particular her relationship with her daughter, underlines her very strong personality and which results in her failure as a mother with regard to a child who was so different from her.  This is also true of her attitude towards her sister-in-law.  Yet at the same time she is extremely close to her brother.  We agreed that these complicated relationships were very well depicted by the author.

However, some of us wondered how one could “conjure up so many details, so many memories, so many thoughts” (Anne’s words) while lying on one’s deathbed.  We concluded that this was a literary device allowing the writer to skip back and forth between different time periods and characters.   In general, it was felt that this book was worth reading, even though its main character did not attract much sympathy from the reader.

Christine