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  • Published: 3 October 2013
  • ISBN: 9780241960295
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 224

Passing On




Passing On is the eighth novel by Booker Prize winning author Penelope Lively

Passing On is the eighth novel by Booker Prize winning author Penelope Lively

Helen is fifty-two and Edward forty-nine when Dorothy, their mother, dies, ending her reign of terror and leaving them ill-equipped to deal with their lives. Timid, cautious and naive, Helen makes the charming Giles Carnaby, family solicitor, the object of a belated schoolgirl crush, while Edward, free to express his sexuality at last, finds it gets the better of him. Dorothy may be dead and buried, but her iron grip continues to hold them in its power.

  • Published: 3 October 2013
  • ISBN: 9780241960295
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 224

About the author

Penelope Lively

Penelope Lively grew up in Egypt but settled in England after the war and took a degree in history at St Anne's College, Oxford. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and a member of PEN and the Society of Authors. She was married to the late Professor Jack Lively, has a daughter, a son and four grandchildren, and lives in Oxfordshire and London.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 novels include Passing On, shortlisted for the 1989 Sunday Express Book of the Year Award, City of the Mind, Cleopatra's Sister and Heat Wave. Many of her books, including Going Back, which first appeared as a children's book, and Oleander, Jacaranda, an autobiographical memoir of her childhood days in Egypt, are published in Penguin.Penelope Lively has also written radio and television scripts and has acted as presenter for a BBC Radio 4 programme on children's literature. She is a popular writer for children and has won both the Carnegie Medal and the Whitbread Award.

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Praise for Passing On

A story as poignant as it is humorous.

Mail on Sunday

Lively is at her sharpest, alert to every conceivable irony.

Jonathan Coe, Guardian

Lively brilliantly captures the ecstasy and agony of falling in love. . . A highly plausible, utterly authentic, beautifully written slice of contemporary life.

Daily Mail

Passing On is about the essential difficulty of being English, of coping with peculiarly English varieties of guilt, nostalgia, frustration and desire

Observer