Moon Tiger - Penelope Lively
A narrative device that I’m noticing repeat itself in some of the Booker books I have read so far is that of the elderly narrator looking back on their life while also commenting on their actions as an elderly narrator. The Sea was the first one I encountered, and The Blind Assassin was the second; now Moon Tiger has become the third.
Claudia Hampton is now in care, and as she slowly begins to die, she narrates what she claims is a “history of the world” but is in reality a look back at her life, with an occasional historical fact thrown in as embellishment. Her memories are not told chronologically but as they come to her, and cover most of her life, from childhood, to youth (with an incestuous element thrown in for Booker sordidness), to her romance with a soldier during WW2, to her struggles as a mother…
The book is written in a simple and easy to read style – until I encountered the first hints of incest I was wondering if it was written for a younger readership – and incorporates a particular narrative feature that I quite enjoy: replaying a scene from multiple perspectives to get different interpretations of various events. Very early on, Claudia sets this up by stating that “The voice of history, of course, is composite” and that she will be telling her “history of the world” through other voices from her life. As a result, people such as her brother, her sister-in-law, and her daughter all get the chance to narrate passages of the story, including things that Claudia (were she actually the narrator of these passages) would have no idea about . Claudia herself also switches between first person and third person narratives, making herself a character within the story she is telling, and blurring the lines of who is telling this story.
At times, the novel also moves to the perspectives of the nurses caring for Claudia, during which moments we get an outside view of Claudia’s degeneration. The nurses also comment on various utterances that Claudia makes, trying to interpret them in light of the limited knowledge they have of her life. Often, this is followed by Claudia reminiscing on something from her history that reinterprets that same utterance.
I really enjoyed Moon Tiger. I would have enjoyed it even more without the incest, but it is a beautifully melancholy work, and makes me wonder what else Penelope Lively has written.
And, when I look up her bibliography, I see that she has predominantly written books for children and youth.
That makes sense to me.
Completed 24 January 2018.
(Bookerworm)
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