"Moon Tiger"

Because she is one of my very favorite contemporary writers, whose writing is so quietly outstanding that it gives me goosebumps, I wrote in praise of author Penelope Lively in one of my very first posts on this blog, on 1/25/10. I recently re-read her most famous novel, “Moon Tiger” (Grove, 1987), and was again struck by her masterful writing and her grasp of human nature. The main character, Claudia, is an old woman looking back at her event-filled life. She has been a journalist who traveled widely and a successful writer of books about history. She has had several lovers, and one daughter, but the person she considers her true love, and always remembers, is Tom, the man she met when she was covering the war in Egypt, and who soon after died in battle. His death was the biggest blow she has suffered in her life. Claudia has always lived life on her own terms, and some find her caustic and difficult; others find her admirable for her independence and fearlessness. She and her now grown daughter have a loving but complicated relationship; they are so different that they don’t know or understand each other well at all. The one person Claudia has always been extremely close to is her brother Gordon. As you can see, this story focuses on strong, original characters and their relationships; almost no one does this better than Lively.

A note about the power of books: When Tom is in the middle of horrific war locations, the one thing that gives him respite, besides thinking of Claudia, is reading. At one point he has a few hours to himself, reads a battered copy of Dickens’ “Dombey and Son,” and marvels at the power of books to blot out everything around him and allow him, just for a little while, to forget about his terrible surroundings and the awful war.