Books with title A House Unlocked

This “interesting and perceptive” memoir recalls the familial country house the author’s grandparents bought in 1923 (The Washington Post Book World). The only child of divorced parents, Penelope Lively was often sent to stay at her grandparents’ country house, Golsoncott. Long after the house was sold out of the family, she begins to piece together the lives of those she knew fifty years before. As her narrative shifts from room to room, object to object, Lively paints a moving portrait of an era of rapid change—and of a family that transformed with the times. Charting the course of the domestic tensions of class and community among her relatives, she brings to light the evidence of the horrors endured during the Russian Revolution and the Holocaust through accounts of the refugees who came to live with them. “An elegiac yet resolutely unsentimental book, the house becomes a Rosetta stone for the author’s familial memories and an unwitting index of social change” in this eloquent meditation on place and time, memory and history, and tribute to the meaning of home (Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times).

In A House Unlocked, Whitbread Award- and Booker Prize-winning Penelope Lively takes us on a journey of her familial country house in England that her grandparents bought in 1923. As her narrative shifts from room to room, object to object, she paints a moving portrait of an era of rapid change -- and of the family that changed with the times. As she charts the course of the domestic tensions of class and community among her relatives, she brings to life the effects of the horrors of the Russian Revolution and the Holocaust through portraits of the refugees who came to live with them. A fascinating, intimate social history of its times, A House Unlocked is an eloquent meditation on place and time, memory and history, and above all a tribute to the meaning of home.

A House Unlocked is Booker Prize winning author Penelope Lively's classic memoir. The only child of divorced parents, Penelope Lively was often sent to stay at her grandparents' country house Golsoncott. Years later, as the house was sold out of the family, she began to piece together the lives of those she knew fifty years before. In a needlework sampler, she sees her grandmother and the wartime children that she sheltered under her roof in 1940. Potted meat jars remind her of the ritual of doing the flowers for church. The smell of the harness room brings her Aunt Rachel - avant-garde artist, fervent horserider - vividly back to life. In A House Unlocked, Penelope Lively delves into the domestic past of her former home, and tells of her own youth and the contrasts between life today and the way they lived then. 'Wonderful. Lively is brilliant and original . . . Every page of this book captures your attention' Daily Mail 'Remarkable, richly enjoyable . . . a captivating memoir' Helen Dunmore, The Times 'Engaging, curious, compelling, remarkable . . . Any time spent with Penelope Lively is a joy' Observer 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.

"The house as I knew it exists now only in my mind. The furnishings are precise and clear, the sounds and smells are as they ever were" Penelope Lively recalls Golsoncott, the country house in Somerset bought by her grandparents in 1923, when it required the services of eleven people; by the 1990s this was remembered only in the wages book buried in the hall chest and the bell system in the pantry. As she remembers the sometimes strange articles there - the gong- stand, the potted-meat jars, the bon-bon dishes - Lively charts the social changes and shifting attitudes of the last century, for Golsoncott was touched by the cataclysmic events of the 20th century: the Russian Revolution, the Holocaust and the Blitz. All made their mark on the house, if you know where to look.

In A House Unlocked, Whitbread Award- and Booker Prize-winning Penelope Lively takes us on a journey of her familial country house in England that her grandparents bought in 1923. As her narrative shifts from room to room, object to object, she paints a moving portrait of an era of rapid change -- and of the family that changed with the times. As she charts the course of the domestic tensions of class and community among her relatives, she brings to life the effects of the horrors of the Russian Revolution and the Holocaust through portraits of the refugees who came to live with them. A fascinating, intimate social history of its times, A House Unlocked is an eloquent meditation on place and time, memory and history, and above all a tribute to the meaning of home.

Whitbread Award- and Booker Prize-winning Penelope Lively is one of England's greatest living writers, whom The New York Times Book Review has called "blessed ... able to render matters of great import with a breath, a barely audible sigh, a touch." In A House Unlocked, Lively bridges personal and social history in telling the story of Golsoncott, the country house in Somerset, England, that her grandparents bought in 1923. As her narrative moves from room to room, from object to object, she paints a moving portrait of an era of rapid change -- and of the family that changed with the times. As she charts the course of the domestic tensions of class and community among her relatives, she brings to life the effects of the horrors of the Russian Revolution and the Holocaust, through portraits of the refugees who came to live with them. A fascinating, intimate social history, A House Unlocked is an eloquent meditation on place and time, memory and history, and above all a tribute to the meaning of home. "An inspiration.... This book helps define one of our leading novelists." -- Brian Martin, The Financial Times