Moon Tiger

Claudia is a historian, a war correspondent, a loud and stubborn child, a red-haired beauty who turns heads, a socialite, she's before her time, she's vain, she knows how to get what she wants, she's adventurous, she's competitive, she's strong-headed, she's enamoured with history, she's eccentric, contemptuous, she dislikes her only child, she's in love, she grieves, she's British, she's on her deathbed, she's writing a kaleidoscope history of her life.

We follow along and get to know her life in fragments and memories and encounters, that are mostly out of order. This is a novel about history, not only WWII in Egypt, but also the writing of history, and the mementos we gift, we keep, we build to hold on to and to preserve our stories. And this is a novel about the different kinds of love one can encounter. And here I have to say, that I found Claudia's youthful and narcissistic “aristocracy of two” with her brother Gordon surprisingly delightful and way more interesting than her desert love story with Tom. The novel didn't give us enough time with Tom to appreciate Tom, while Gordon is introduced as a mirror to Claudia, which gives us all the context we need.

I was a bit irritated that the last chapters were spent on a new character (Laszlo) and Tom's letter, but else I was always delighted and occasionally entranced by this book.

Not at all what I usually read, and thus - a refreshing change! I give this probably 4.5/5.

A meditative look at mortality, history and life (LIFE) through the eyes of a dying elderly woman, Claudia. Claudia is an intellectual firebrand and narcissist living in the first half of the 20th century; not always likable, but that's fine. The book swims with a weird (beautifully written!) stream of consciousness as we drift from Claudia as an old dying woman in 1980s England to Claudia as a young war reporter in 1940s Egypt to Claudia's fractured, aloof motherhood. It's good! The writing walks a very strong purple line; let's say I found it a pleasant lavender, though your mileage may vary.

Central to Claudia's life is her too-brief romance with an English soldier, Tom, stationed in Egypt,. This was kind of the standard “doomed love in the souq” sub-genre (i.e. English Patient, Cairo Time, Casablance), where the desert is a stand-in for that place beyond “real life” and quotidian responsibilities. Despite it being a sub-genre that's been done to death, I still found this part of the book really affecting. (And I LOVED the awful British 1940s slang - I say!) Oh, Tom!

Claudia Hampton, dying in a hospital in London, is thinking back
over her life. Penelope Lively weaves Claudia's memories with the memories of a daughter and a brother
and friends, and spills the story of Claudia's life onto the page in little snippets and bits to create a story
that is both clever in its structure and beautifully written. Recommended.
Favorite Quote: p. 28 “The cast is assembling; the plot thickens. Mother, Gordon,
Sylvia. Jasper. Lisa. Mother will drop out before long, retiring gracefully and with minimum fuss after an
illness in 1962. Others, as yet unnamed, will come and go. Some more than others; one above all. In life
as in history the unexpected lies waiting, grinning from around corners.”