Dimensions
144 x 222 x 28mm
A big shabby Victorian suburban house, the smell of raincoats and coq au vin in the hall, the six mugs for the children slung from the kitchen dresser hooks: for destructive Paul, difficult Gina, elegant Sandra, considerate Katie, clever Roger and flighty Clare, Allersmead was the perfect place to grow up. But was it?
Now grown-up and off in different directions, one by one the children return to Allersmead, to their home-making mother and aloof writer father and a house that for years has played silent witness to the secrets of a family, and one particular secret of which no one speaks . . .
In her sixteenth novel, Penelope Lively shows her extraordinary understanding of what makes us human as she delves into the mystery of family life.
The house itself has experienced around 43,000 days since first it rose from the mud of a late Victorian building site. It has known over a century of breakfasts, it has sat out decade upon decade of springs, of people saying, oh look, the trees are coming into bud. It has seen birth and death and a great deal of sex. Most of this it does not record; it keeps its counsel, it does not bear witness to the Sturm und Drang, to the raised voices and the tears, nor to the laughter, the exuberance, the expectations. It is merely the shell, the framework, the abiding presence that remains when all that evanescent human stuff has passed through and away. It is a triumph of impervious red brick, black and white tiles, oak woodwork, stained glass lilies and acanthus. It neither knows nor cares. Created as a shrine to family life, it has remained as such, even if family life itself is a rather different construct.
