35. Consequences by Penelope Lively

Three generations of women are followed over seventy years in Lively’s newest novel. Lorna meets Matt in London’s St. James Park in the 1930’s. While she is from a cold, upper class family, he is a wood engraver who falls in love that day with Lorna. The two eventually marry, and move to an isolated English cottage where Matt does wood cuttings and Lorna raises their daughter, Molly. Their idyllic lives are destroyed when Matt loses his life fighting in the Battle of Crete during World War II. Unable to stay alone with Molly, Lorna moves to London and eventually marries Matt’s business partner and friend, Lucas. After Lorna’s death, the story then follows the now grown up Molly and her relationship with a wealthy man which eventually results in a daughter, Ruth. As Molly ages in the novel, the focus then turns to modern day Ruth, a journalist with two children of her own, who decides to visit the scene of her grandfather’s death, and the cottage her grandparents lived in.

Full of well-developed characters, historical details, beautiful language and writing, and a story line that comes full circle, this is a wonderful novel to read. For library lovers, the character Molly works in a library in London in the sixties, and ends up having to leave her job because she challenges the library’s stance on a “radical” book. For readers of Roasmunde Pilcher, Joy Fielding, and Joanna Trollope.