Making it Up

by Penelope Lively

Look out for Penelope Lively’s new book, The Purple Swamp Hen and Other Stories.

Hailed by critics as a benchmark in a career full of award-winning achievements, Making It Up is Penelope Lively's answer to the oft-asked question, "How much of what you write comes from your own life?" What if Lively hadn't escaped from Egypt, her birthplace, at the outbreak of World War II? What would her life have been like if she'd married someone else? From a hillside in Italy to an archaeological dig, the author explores the stories that could have been hers, fashioning a sublime dance between reality and imagination that confirms her reputation as a singular talent.

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories, Book Club, British Literature, Adult Fiction

215 pages, Paperback

First published July 5, 2005

About the author

Penelope Lively is the author of many prize-winning novels and short-story collections for both adults and children. She has twice been shortlisted for the Booker Prize: once in 1977 for her first novel, The Road to Lichfield, and again in 1984 for According to Mark. She later won the 1987 Booker Prize for her highly acclaimed novel Moon Tiger.

Her other books include Going Back; Judgement Day; Next to Nature, Art; Perfect Happiness; Passing On; City of the Mind; Cleopatra’s Sister; Heat Wave; Beyond the Blue Mountains, a collection of short stories; Oleander, Jacaranda, a memoir of her childhood days in Egypt; Spiderweb; her autobiographical work, A House Unlocked; The Photograph; Making It Up; Consequences; Family Album, which was shortlisted for the 2009 Costa Novel Award, and How It All Began.

She is a popular writer for children and has won both the Carnegie Medal and the Whitbread Award. She was appointed CBE in the 2001 New Year’s Honours List, and DBE in 2012.

Penelope Lively lives in London. She was married to Jack Lively, who died in 1998.

Reviews

[Hugh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lively describes this book as "an exercise in confabulation". Each chapter starts with a key decision that affected the path her life took, and builds a counterfactual story imagining what might have been had things turned out slightly differently. This is a fascinating premise for a book, and it gives her the latitude to showcase many different kinds of writing, some serious, for example the chapter in which her husband is sent to the Korean war before they met, and others humorous, such as the chapter which analyses a dysfunctional group of archaeologists on a dig. As always her prose is a pleasure to read.

[Roger Brunyate · Rating 4 out of 5]

An Anti-Memoir

To write fiction is to make a succession of choices, to send the narrative and the characters in one direction rather than another. Story is navigation: successful story is the triumphant progress down exactly the right paths, avoiding the dead ends, the unsatisfactory turns. Life, of course, is not at all like that. There is no shrewd navigator, just a person's own haphazard lurching from one decision to another. Which is why life so often seems to lack the authenticity of fiction. And when a writer contemplates her own life, there is an irresistible compulsion to tinker with it, to try out a crucial adjustment here or there. What follows in one such tinkering. The protagonist is not myself, her experience and her associates are invented, but she is perhaps a suggestion of another outcome.

The "other outcome" in this section of Penelope Lively's fascinating "anti-memoir" of 2005 is her imagining what might have happened if, instead of continuing in her humble research assistant job at Oxford, she had accepted the suggestion of a visiting American professor that she apply for a fellowship at his transatlantic university. Her alter-ego protagonist, now in her middle years, accompanies her new husband for a guest lecture in Oxford then goes on to visit some relatives she hardly knows. Lively may be imagining a different life for herself, but her portrait of a British expatriate coming back is dead on the money, and (genders reversed) virtually mirrors my own.

Let me quote three more of her cues, which I often find more engaging than the stories themselves:

Everything pointed to a German assault on Cairo. Now there was a serious exodus. Many went to Palestine, as it then was; others to Kenya, Tanganyika, Aden. And those who could get a passage boarded ships bound for South Africa. Cape Town was said to be delightful.

So Jean, Lively's childhood alter-ego, instead of going from Cairo to Palestine, as her real family did, sails for Cape Town in the charge of her nanny—and never gets there.

We dance and dance, and sometime in the small hours we leave for his flat. There is only one way in which this night can end. […] I have had two children; they have been the light of my life. But what about the children who never were, the shadow children never born who lurk in the wings? For me, the night of the Chelsea Arts Ball was just a heady rite of passage—but suppose it had been otherwise?

The protagonist in this story is not Miranda, Lively's imagined double who falls deep into the hippie culture, but Miranda's daughter Chloe, determined to undo all the mistakes her mother made; will she manage any better?

And so, by a whisker, he missed the battle of the Imjin River, into which other national servicemen with the Northumberland Fusiliers were flung, some of them within days of their arrival in Japan for forward posting to Korea. […] I might never have known him. We might never have met. There might never have been out children, and theirs, and the forty-one years of love and life and shared experiences, and those long hard months at the end.

Writing in 2005, Lively anticipates Kate Atkinson's brilliant novel of alternative endings, Life After Life. A closer comparison, though, is to Jenny Erpenbeck's The End of Days, in which she tells the story of a real person (her grandmother) in terms of a series of outcomes that in fact did not happen. But because it contains so much that is real, Erpenbeck's book reads continuously, as a novel. Lively's breaks into a series of short stories, each with different protagonists and settings, with the author's real life continued only in the brief interludes such as those I have quoted. And as stories, they are of mixed quality. All of them show an uncanny feel for the language and the social attitudes that (to British ears at least) so perfectly capture the time and class. But many of them do not go beyond such vignettes. The few stories that do, however, are special. "The Battle of the Imjin River," for example, contains some of the best battle writing I have ever read from any author, let alone a female one. The first story, "The Mozambique Channel," is a wartime romance narrative with a terrifying climax, made all the more special by being filtered through the mind and voice of a children's nanny. And "Comet," in which Lively imagines that she has been killed in air accident and her remains found only decades later, turns into a beautiful and moving story about two loves: one that budded but never bloomed, and another discovered in the autumn of life.

I would recommend this book especially to those who have read several of Lively's novels. Its pages are peopled with the cousins of her characters: similar lifestyles, similar education, similar problems, similar jobs. It cements the realization that everything in an author's fiction is distilled somehow from her experience of life—in Lively's case more than most. And it reinforces one of the persistent themes of her novels—shown perhaps most clearly in Consequences —that the "haphazard lurching from one decision to another" in fact leads to other decisions and those to others, making up that texture of interconnections that constitute a well-lived life.

[Cecily · Rating 4 out of 5]

Confabulations. Exploring turning points in her life and how her life might have been if she'd taken a different turning, eg if when fleeing Egypt, they'd gone to S Africa instead of Palestine then England, if she'd got pregnant when young and single. Each self-contained diversion is opened and closed with the real life context. Clever concept, well executed.

[Philippa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think to some extent most writers use their own lives, or those of people they know, as inspiration for their work, but Penelope Lively is open about this in this book, and presents a collection of stories as fiction but has side notes to them in her own voice, telling us what foundations the story had in reality and how she embellished it. She tells us of chances she never took, roads not travelled, and imagined different outcomes for things she may or may not have experienced. As I am doing this with my own novel, I found her thoughts on this fascinating. As some other reviewers pointed out, some of the stories were more interesting than others, but overall I really love her writing. She has such an economy and elegance in her style that I really want to learn from, and I'm keen to read more.

[Sian Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

I feel as if someone has been hiding Penelope Lively from me. I know that can't be true -- but, based on this collection of short stories, I feel as if she's up there with Alice Munro and Andrea Barrett, and as such, someone really should have been forcing her work into my hands before now, for my own good. The short stories in this collection are literary without being lifeless, precise and deeply human, and the framing device -- small essays about the decision point in her own life she's playing with in each story -- delights me. It's one of the best examinations of how moments in a writer's real life can touch off fiction that is somehow as illuminating, as authentic, as straightforward memoir could ever be.

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting experiment, by a favorite author, produced ... to my mind ... a rather inconsistent product that was entertaining enough, but not entirely gratifying, yet more than saved (justified? redeemed?) by one, lengthy, sublime moment of grace.

I've been reading Lively for decades, and I've read a lot of her stuff, and I've been enamored with most of it and pleasantly surprised by some.... I've preferred her novels, been interested in but not always bowled over by her autobiographical work, and was very pleasantly surprised by her short stories, in particular, The Purple Swamp Hen and Other Stories. And this offers up aspects of all these, yet ... yet ...

I put off reading this for some time because I was skeptical, and I fear that my skepticism became a self-fulfilling prophesy. My gut says that, any of the individual stories would have entertained me as stories, but I didn't find the what if I ... or there but for the grace of ... concept or conceit or novelty particularly compelling.

Having said all of that, for whatever reason, I found the book more than worthwhile due to its inclusion of Comet, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Am I a sap? No doubt. But the story worked for me on many levels, and reminded me of some of Lively's earlier work that I found particularly well constructed.

If you're not familiar with Lively, I wouldn't recommend starting with this book. Many start with her Booker Prize winning Moon Tiger, but I'd probably suggest, instead, reaching back to her first real novel, The Road to Lichfield, which seems as good a place to start as any.

[B the BookAddict · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this novel (novella) Lively tells stories of parts of her life that weren't, well, parts of her life at all. She is 'making it up' hence the title. She states emphatically “This book is fiction. If anything, it is an anti-memoir.” In this book, she takes certain times in her life then crafts a fiction around characters which are neither her nor resemble her. It is sectioned into chapters: Mozambique Channel, The Albert Hall, The Temple of Mithras, Imjin River, Transatlantic, Comet, Number Twelve Sheep Street and lastly, Penelope. In her own words, “This exercise in confabulation has been another kind of experiment, a different way of enlisting story to complement reality, at the opposite end of my life.” As in all her other novels, Lively does a fine job is weaving stories which cannot fail to please. Although I would not recommend this to first read if you have never read this author before, nevertheless it is an excellent novel. 4★

[Jeanne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Does anyone know of other authors/books that have used this alternative approach or written what Lively calls an "anti-memoir?" What a clever idea, embellished by Lively's vivid imagination. I'm sure that many of us have often thought, "what if..."

[Madelynp · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. I have recommended it to almost everyone that I have spoken to, and I want to read it again soon so that I can get even more out of it. This is my first foray into Penelope Lively's work, but I will be coming back soon (here's looking at you, Moon Tiger). The premise of this book is so clever, and the idea of an anti-memoir thrills me. I feel like this would be a brilliant exercise for a short stories class.

[Genevieve Brassard · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great premise (« what if » fictional excursions inspired by Lively’s life events) and the majority of the stories are compelling to varying degrees. Would make a great pick for a fiction workshop, as a telling example of the ingredients that go into a successful novelist’s work (obviously, it’s about more than « write what you know », and empathetic imagination is key).

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Delightful. Her usual easy to read, inventive style, wonderful descriptions, setting out half a dozen snapshots of women's lives. But each is introduced with a note from the author about how this might have been her life (or her husband's, one story is a British National Service soldier sent to Korea).

A book I think you could only write in your later years. It requires an understanding of yourself that isn't there in youth or middle age. A book that should maybe only written by someone with superb story telling skills too. Each tale is whole although brief and although each is a 'what might have been' there is no sentimentality.

Penelope Lively seems very happy with how her life did turn out which has given her the freedom to consider the paths not taken and turn them into stories. I'm very glad she did.

[Char Freund · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a book club selection. Our group was divided on the rating. Those who love lyrical, historical books thought it was innovative and beautifully written. Those who prefer nonfiction or deep contemporary fiction stated they just couldn’t get into it. They were confused at who Penelope was in each short story since the author did state it was a anti memoir. Using the first story for example, some thought the child, Jean, represented Penelope while others thought the nanny, Shirley, did. So some thought this was a positive and indicative of creativity while others thought it took away from enjoyment.

I’m in the latter group. I was looking forward to a book of short stories and was intrigued by the premise of “what if?” one had been born into a different “class”, met someone else who would become your spouse, etc. The forward led me to think each story would tell an aspect of Penelope’s life having an alternative outcome. But each story used all fictional characters and the connection to an event in her life was tenuous at best.

But since it was a book club selection, the discussion was interesting and no one regretted reading a different genre for a change.

[Woolfhead · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really cool concept - not a memoir. What she does instead is look back on various points in her life when she could have taken a different path and writes a fictional sketch. For example, at one point during her Oxford years, she meets an American professor who encourages her to apply to grad school in the States. She didn't; she stayed in Oxford and met her husband, but she imagines a woman who has been away from England for so long that it is no longer home, visiting with her American husband. Interesting concept and a great & thought-provoking read.

[Cara · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is such a unique book! I've never read anything remotely like it before. Each chapter is a philosophical and imaginative exercise in how our choices affect the course of our lives and the lives of the people we interact with. The book is a series of vignettes taken from the life of the author, but an exploration of what would have occurred if she had made different choices than she did in reality, and she rarely takes the starring role in this "anti-memoir".

[Yvonne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maybe I liked this so much because I like Penelope Lively so much. But the idea alone is a great one, not to mention the execution. She imagines how her life might have been, if chance had put her in harms way as a child, or if she had taken a different path as a graduate student. Being a fan made these turns of fancy more fun for me to read perhaps.

[Kelli · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love the way Penelope writes. I write stories (some day to be the next great American novel!)all the time and they all start with some situation I am in or am observing and it used to be difficult to get far enough outside them to disguise the characters from people who might recognize themselves. AFter reading "Making it up" I see how much fun it is to RUN away with a subject.

[Debbie · Rating 1 out of 5]

Gave up in the middle of the first story. The author’s style, though deft, didn’t engage me. Ironic that someone named Lively could write something so slow and uninteresting. The language is too controlled, detached, reserved, and low key—all translating to extremely boring. A huge disappointment. Have trouble understanding why it got such glowing reviews.

[Terry · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love this writer. Her voice, the play on 'hinges', those paths that could take us in different directions during life. This book, however, was a bit tedious for me. I think because I loved Moon Tiger so much. However, well worth reading just for the story titled 'Comet'. This story was tremendous and reminded me of why I love her.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great idea, and well done. But the only story I liked deeply was the first one.

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have been wondering about the distinction between a book portraying racism and a book being racist in itself for a while now. To me it is obvious that a book dealing with racism and therefore portraying it (but judging it negatively) is not racist in itself. A book like Heart of Darkness, on the other hand, in which racism is not only prevalent but also the incentive for the entire story and, most of all, considered 'good' and therefore not criticized but rather normalized, can in my opinion definitely be seen as racist. These are obvious examples. And then there's this book, and I just don't know.
This is a short story collection, in which Penelope Lively takes prompts from her life and changes a choice that she or someone else made. With most stories I did not find any problem, but especially the first one almost led me to put the book down. It was set in Egypt and written from the perspective of an English nanny, and it was exactly as you'd expect it to be. A few of the lines: "and then probably she'd have to settle for one of those Armenian girls, that let the children run wild and haven't a clue about table manners." "all the good pensions were booked up, so Mrs Leech was forced to take a room at this tatty place, Greek-run, horrible food, and the sheets were none too clean." It's full of condescending and too-often-spoken "casually racist" remarks. On the one hand, I thought that maybe it was part of the character she was writing from, and that could well have been - after all, the racism did not seep through in stories without characters that could have been obnoxious - but, on the other hand, maybe there was just no situation to be racist in these stories. However, as there is no negative judgment attached to the racism, it is not something I can get behind and I will therefore give the book the lower side of the star rating (3.5->3).
However, were it not for this unpleasant and unnecessary racism, I would have very much enjoyed this book as a whole. By taking various prompts from her life, Lively manages to work out different scenarios, talking a lot about life itself and the way characters intervene in each others'. It was such a thoughtful book, and I was particularly amazed at how I was not bothered by the format of short stories - maybe because I read it a bit shorter, but maybe because of the introductions and conclusions as well: every story was introduced and concluded by Lively explaining how it was connected to her actual life and reflecting on the story afterwards, a device cleverly put to use to bind all stories together in a pleasant way. Furthermore, the writing, in my opinion, was superb. I connected with it quite a bit and found all the ponderings and musings on life to come across in her peaceful, calm writing in excellent manner. She talks a lot about archeology as well, which is something I apparently find quite interesting. It was particularly the story about an archeological dig, The Temple of Mithras, I was blown away by. She discusses a set of characters, writing from everyone's point of view, and the way they view the dig they're at and why they're there. Their connections to each other are also central, cleverly bringing across a difference in how they see themselves and how they actually are and appear to others. Eventually, it also deals with the way everyone lays out everything they want to happen, and the powerlessness people actually have over the future.
It is with pain in my heart that I don't give this four stars, but the racism in the first story (and a little, little remark or two in a latter one) would not let me. Alas, but I would certainly and most definitely recommend this book: it is and remains a masterpiece.

[Julie Robinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Somehow, choice and contingency have landed you where you are, as the person that you are, and the whole process seems so precarious that you look back at those climactic moments when things might have gone entirely differently, when life might have spun off in some other direction, and wonder at this apparently arbitrary outcome." p. 1

"The distorting feature of anyone's perception of their own life is that you are the central figure. Me; my life. But nobody else sees it thus. For others, you are peripheral. You may indeed be of significance to them - of great significance, perhaps - but equally you may make barely an impression; either way, you are not the seeing eye. You are an adjunct, a bit player." p. 65

"It was the first trip to England in eighteen months, the first time since her mother had died, the first in which she had no parent to visit, no anchor. She was forty-nine, and she thought that this parentlessness felt as though you had gone to sea in a small boat and found yourself out of sight of any shore. There was no longer that distant reassuring shape. Nothing now between you and the horizon." p. 117

"I was young in the middle of the twentieth century. The year 1900 was history; the millennium was science fiction." p. 142

"Mostly, you could ignore the passage of time; that is to say, you tamed it, you reduced it to diary pages, to dates and days of the week, to the setting on the alarm clock or the start of a television program....and would lie there thinking: I am forty-seven, for heaven's sake, and I don't know how this has come about." p. 149

"If you could not set them within a context, they became meaningless. Like framed sepia photographs in a junk shop." p. 154

"People identify themelves in some subliminal way. You know very soon into which category they fall. You know that you would like to see them again; or you definitely would not, or you don't much care either way." p. 155

[Carolyn Crocker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Consummate novelist Penelope Lively prompts herself to 9 confabulations from her own life-- the what-ifs and could-have-beens-- to great effect. These short stories are and are not her personality and experience, due to drastic shifts in point of view and outcome-- and are amusing throughout. She kills herself off several times and at others is a very minor secondary character.
Expansive, manifold lives with wide ranging intelligence abound.

"People's expressions were opaque, but told her something was amiss. She labored to speak as they spoke....She found herself always a little on edge, with those she had known since childhood, with those she had been at college with, as though she might be measured and found wanting. It made her behave expansively, urgently, like some propitiating puppy. She jumped up at people, she rolled on her back with all four paws in the air." p 119-120

"To write fiction is to make a succession of choices, to send the narrator and the characters in one direction rather than another. Story is investigation; successful story is the triumphant progress down exactly the right paths, avoiding the dead ends, the unsatisfactory turns, Life, of course, is not at all like that. Thereisno shrewd navigator, just a person's own haphazard lurching from one decision to another. Which is why life so often seems to lack the authenticity of fiction." p. 117

"You write out of experience, and a large part of that experience is the life of the spirit; reading is the liberation into the minds of others....It seems to me that writing is an extension of reading...one that springs from serendipitous reading." p.178

"A house that contains books .has concealed power...This house has ballast, never mind the content, it is the weight that counts-- all that solid, silent reference to other matters, to wider concerns, to a world beyond these walls. There is a presence here-- confident, impregnable. Books invaded; they arrive, and settle." p.179

[Esther · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've now read a number of Penelope Lively's novels and semi-memoirs, with a mixed bag of appreciation. I prefer her at her more memoir-esque. I have not, till picking up Making It Up, thought of her as a writer of short stories. My bad.

As I moved from one chapter to the next I was reminded, over and over, of Alice Munro. Being nearly the same age, Lively and Munro must have been similarly affected, during their most formative years, by the tumultuous events of the mid-20th century, which may explain this disconcerting but pleasurable sense of deja vu.

They were both impressionable youngsters during the six years that their respective nations, Britain in Penelope Lively's case, and Canada in Alice Munro's, battled the Axis powers in Europe and Asia. They reached adulthood in the fifties and married young, as girls of that era tended to do. They then, to quote Penelope Lively, "bred early, usually on account of unreliable contraceptive methods."

They are both still amongst the living. Penelope Lively is now 90 (in 2023), and Alice Munro is 92. Penelope Lively is, at 90, well...lively. Still active, still writing, still speaking. I like to think of her in her London home, tending her tiny garden as best as the frailty of her extreme age allows. I would love to learn her thoughts on the October 7 Hamas attack in Israel, and Israel's subsequent near-leveling of Gaza.

Sadly, Alice Munro has dropped out of sight. I fear the years may have dealt harshly with her health and cognitive ability, which would be unsurprising considering her age.

Munro has left a large trove of short stories, most of which I have already read. I've come late to Penelope Lively--at least to her collections of short stories--and I am looking forward to working my way through them.

Making It Up was just plain fun.

[Jeanne Julian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Full disclosure: I'm a Penelope Lively fan. This book plays with the theme, recurrent in her fiction, of serendipity, coincidence, shaping the course of our lives. This book launches from discrete episodes from her own life; she then speculates what "might have happened" if circumstances had evolved differently in each case. These fictional narratives are bookended with her notes on what actually took place. It is a wonderful exercise in the power of imagination. Her portrayal of being a male soldier in battle--putting herself in a loved one's shoes--seems as painfully detailed as if someone with that experience had written it--perhaps the most powerful pages in the book. But she also sees a wartime ocean voyage of refugees fleeing wartime Egypt from the perspective of a prim nanny, and envisions the aftermath of her imagined death in a plane crash. This might not be everyone's cup of tea, since it has neither a novelistic plot, nor the fascination of a cohesive memoir--it's a hybrid. But if you appreciate insight into how writers "make it up" from reality; the magic of fine prose; and/or a perspective on British citizens and World War II, this book will intrigue you.

[K Khire · Rating 4 out of 5]

“People identify themselves in some subliminal way. You know very soon into which category they fall. You know that you would like to see them again; or you definitely would not; or you don’t care much either way.”

In her part memoir, total confabulation (her lovely words), Penelope Lively takes us on a journey through the “what ifs” of her life. She imagines stories if she had taken a different path. And she does it in her characteristic philosophical, lyrical way.(Several books ago, I read How It All Began, a novel of a key event and the ripple effects from one change).

As a young reader, I was obsessed with the “choose your own adventure” books. I would set off on a tale, make a choice about the next part and see it through. Then I would return to the beginning and discover all the alternate endings. Those books got a workout!

In life, we are choosing a story path every day. We make connections or we don’t. We take the risks or we don’t. We live or…
And we are making it up as we go along!

Even with the best plans, all of us adapt, change course, reset. This novel helps us think about the paths not taken.

Making It Up 📖 by Penelope Lively

[Marjorie Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another wonderful book by Penelope Lively, and highly recommended for all Penelope Lively fans, and, come to that, all fans of brilliant writing, because Penelope Lively is just a brilliant writer.

This is a quasi-autobiographical book, containing a series of cameos that may have happened to her, if circumstances had been slightly different, or if different choices had been made.

There's the evacuation from Egypt during the war on a boat that could have been torpedoed, but wasn't, the teenage pregnancy that could have happened, but didn't, the fatal air crash of a flight that she could have been on, but wasn't, the life she might have made for herself in America, but didn't, and more.

Sometimes, the fictional protagonist is Penelope herself, sometimes it's an alter ego, and sometimes, it appears to be someone completely different. Each cameo story starts with a prologue describing the real-life circumstances in which the other path may have been followed, and the other events that may have happened, and ends with an epilogue describing what actually happened. As well as the brilliant cameos themselves, I loved these additional insights into her life and experiences.

[Susan Liston · Rating 2 out of 5]

I like Penelope's writing, and this was a unique idea. The stories are fictional, but based on moments in her own life that easily could have had a different outcome. I really liked the first story, but sort of struggled through the rest. I just don't much like short stories, although I do keep trying to for some reason. Maybe my problem is that I think if a story is especially good, then why couldn't it have been a whole novel. And if its not that good, then why bother with it in the first place. Maybe that is my pitiful explanation. (and yes, I know there are classic short stories that are perfect just as they are and which I probably had to read in some English class along the way and didn't much like them, either)

[Sarah Melissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Penelope Lively writes beautifully. Most of these stories are about “might have been” junctures in her life; in some she participates in other people’s stories. The stories are fictional—obviously—but for the most part she does not identify with characters. The “might have beens” range from as innocuous as participating in an architectural dig to being torpedoed in an evacuation from Egypt in WWII to actually dying in a plane crash ten years later. This last story is told from the point of view of a fictitious much younger half-sister. One story is of her husband's involvement with the Korean War, when, by the grace of God, and winning a somewhat inconsistent lottery of being accepted into University, he escaped this fate.

[Camilla Chester · Rating 3 out of 5]

At first I thought I was going to totally love this book - what an original way to write an autobiography - like a sort of sliding doors things, parallel universes. We've often thought of our lives in this way. In one of my alternative lives I'm a chef, maybe on a cruise ship!
In truth though I got a bit bored and ending up only reading just over half of them. It was more like a collection of short stories and I was more interested in the real bits in between than the 'what ifs' themselves.

[Julie Nortillo · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting (albeit not unique) idea, I️ was curious to read Lively’s what-ifs. I️ am not a huge fan of hers nor of short stories and plodded through most of her book. Some stories (not surprisingly) intrigued me more than others but I️ wonder if any layperson had written the same book, would it have the same following? This wasn’t autobiographical but the opposite - what might have happened if her actual life didn’t...