I don't understand why this book does not appear in toplists. Agreed, it was awarded the Bookerprice in 1987 (before the great hypes), but seems to be forgotten since, whilst according to me it really is a pearl.Maybe it is because the story appears to be a kind of pulp fiction: that of a remarkable woman, Claudia Hampton, looking back on her life, on her deathbed, and with a passionate love affaire as crucial ax. But don't be wrong: this really is a very interesting book and even a tough read. This review can never do justice to that.In the first place it is the story of a woman with a very unconventional attitude, confronting everything society expects of her. In the private sphere she has an on- and off-relationship with the father of her child, she refuses to fulfil the traditional motherhoodrole; in the public sphere she makes it into a war-correspondent, publishes historical books that confront traditional academic (male) historians, etc. Lively does not present her as a heroin, on the contrary, Claudia is bluntly unsympathetic and selfish.Secondly, the book illustrates very handsomely the interwooven character of individual lifes and world history. Claudia constantly philosophizes about her (rather insignificant) place in history. People contain the whole history of the universe in their bodies and in their mind, but to them history feels very strange, very far from their own lifes. The official, academic history even seems to obliterate the essence of life. In this sense this book is a typical postmodernist reflection on the relativity of history (everything is story, there are only personal stories).Lively also focusses on the subjective nature of experiences (including that of time), and on the problematic relation between language and reality. She's a worthy representant of the postmodernist literature, next to Julian Barnes and Graham Swift.I have real admiration for the sense of nuance and dosage Lively applies in her writing. Claudia is a very complex personality, she gradually discovers that her competion with and attraction to her brother Gordon is one of the most driving forces in her life; - I can hear you exclaim, ah, the classical incest-theme!, but beware, it is brought in a psychologically very refined way. The love story also is brought with much delicacy: Claudia's passionate love affaire with the soldier Tom in Cairo in the second World War, and the dramatic turn after Tom is killed in battle, of course have a tremendous impact upon Claudia's life; but Lively handsomely avoids the trap of too much sentimentality; she lets Claudia give this drama a place in her long life after the episode; this attests to Lively's great wisdom. The death scene at the end by the way is one of the most beautiful I have ever read.In short, this booklet is a real treasure!
Time is undoubtedly linear, but our perception of it is not. And for Claudia Hampton, the principal character of Penelope Lively’s novel, Moon Tiger, time, manifest as her life, is a veritable jumble of memories, unfulfilled ambition, probabilities and denied possibilities. She is confused, at least on the outside, and lying infirm in a nursing home bed. But her mind is alive with a life lived, a life she distils to share with us.Claudia´s confusion, however, is only an external phenomenon. Internally her memory is sharp, if not ordered. She reminisces on childhood, eager sexual awakening in adolescence, a career as a war correspondent, historian and writer, an affair or two, one very special but doomed, an eventual marriage, maturity, parenthood and old age, but not necessarily in that order. Events are assembled and revisited. Along the way there has been death, birth, a miscarriage, disappointment, fulfilment and ambition, seasoned with shakings of passion, hatred, pride and not a little incest. It has been an interesting life, especially remarkable for the way that Claudia relives it for us.Claudia’s memories are often intense. There is an attention to detail that renders her character completely three dimensional, four if you include time. She has struggled – and continues to do so – with what seems to be a fundamental lack of love for her daughter, Lisa, and a deep impatience with her grandchildren. Jasper, her partner, was something of a disappointment, but at least a reassuring one, after war had dealt cruelly with what she herself had wanted.Claudia not only recalls but also relives her passion. She has often been free with her affections, but she has only once given herself completely. Her recollections of the horrors of war are both raw and stark. There is no heroism here: heroic deeds maybe, but only when the protagonists effect them by default.But in many ways Claudia’s life stopped those years ago in the nineteen forties. What life promised would never be realised and what it had generated died before it truly came to life. Living has thus been a compromise that Claudia herself was only partially willing to make. It is into the gaps left by compromise that occasional views of her from another’s perspective add real spice to the narrative.Moon Tiger is a complex, challenging read. It is so rewarding, however, that time stands still while you read, but then, at the end, seems to have flashed by in an instant. The instant, of course, was Claudia’s life. Moon Tiger was a brand of mosquito repellent that Claudia and her lover burned during their brief time together in Egypt. What was left was just a little ash.
What do You think about Moon Tiger (1997)?
I've looked forward to this one for years, and it lived up to all expectations. A 1987 winner of the Booker Prize, Moon Tiger is the first book I've ever read by Penelope Lively. I shall not soon forget it. This novel deals with several of my favorite themes: the passage of time, the impact of settings on our lives, independent women. Memory plays a huge role in this book; specifically, the way that we reshape memories. The narrative structure is not linear, but it always makes sense. The writing is descriptive, penetrating, poignant. Claudia may not be the most likeable character, but is she ever interesting. I will think about this one for a long time to come.
—Shane Malcolm
I cried. On public transport. Penelope Lively is that good. I urge you to read this. She's made a fantastic protagonist in Claudia Hampton; fiercely intelligent, beautiful, independent, believable. Claudia, who read History at Oxford like Lively, writes popular historical non-fiction and on her deathbead resolves to write 'a history of the world... And in the process, my own.' It sounds a bit self-aggrandising, but fear not: we are in the hands of a master.It's beautifully, cleverly done. She looks at the history of her studies and journalism - taking in wars, legendary personalities, sweeping movements and tragedies, and links it almost seamlessly with the people and minute episodes of her own life in a way that manages to be lighthearted, and wonderfully subtle. For anyone who's ever paused to consider, in a woolly-headed way, the relationship between their own personal story, and the vast narrative of history, this book is like having those thoughts played out before you but in ways more lucid and moving than you could have expressed yourself. If that makes any sense at all. One of the best books I've ever had the joy to read. I'm off to find more Penelope Lively.
—Cesca
Moon Tiger has been one of my greatest discoveries to date. I loved this book immeasurably, and am grateful that it came to me at such a perfect time in my life (from the dusty shelves of an Oxfam bookshop), so that I could not only comprehend it as I did, but also could come away feeling significantly altered by it.The story is of glorious Claudia Hampton, writer, historian, lover, mother, woman. But the story itself is secondary to its telling. What matters most here, or so it seems, are words. This whole book is a love letter to words - a recognition of the way that we can use them to preserve ourselves; to take tiny moments of our lives and pack them in ice, so that they might go on existing after us."The power of language." Lively writes, "Preserving the ephemeral; giving form to dreams, permanence to sparks of sunlight." (Pg. 9)Claudia Hampton's story is a deathbed examination of her life - a rehashing of the moments that came to define her. The people, some long gone, that she can save from mortality through the incredible and enduring power of words.And words themselves: small fragments of a gargantuan history that we cannot truly comprehend, but that we draw upon every day without thought. “We open our mouths and out flow words whose ancestries we know not. We are walking lexicons. In a single sentence of idle chatter we preserve Latin, Anglo-Saxon, Norse; we carry a museum inside our heads, each day we commemorate peoples of whom we have never heard. More than that, we speak volumes- our language is the language of everything we have not read. Shakespeare and the Authorised Version surface in supermarkets, on buses, chatter on radio and television. I never cease to wonder at it. That words are more durable than anything, that they blow with the wind, hibernate and reawaken, shelter parasitic on the most unlikely hosts, survive and survive and survive.” (Pg. 41-42)This book reminded me that our lives are important, and worth writing about. It reminded me that pain has a purpose, and although you need not believe that everything happens for a reason, there is a certain solace in the idea that everything that happens to you plays a part in making you who you are. I'm not so frightened now by changes or by life."I'm writing a history of the world," she says. "A history of the world, yes. And in the process, my own." (Pg. 1)
—Wendy Chard
