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    Life in the Garden
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    Life in the Garden
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    Life in the Garden
    Audiobook5 hours

    Life in the Garden

    Written by Penelope Lively

    Narrated by Heather Lloyd

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    From the Booker Prize winner and national bestselling author, reflections on gardening, art, literature, and life

    Penelope Lively takes up her key themes of time and memory, and her lifelong passions for art, literature, and gardening in this philosophical and poetic memoir. From the courtyards of her childhood home in Cairo to a family cottage in Somerset, to her own gardens in Oxford and London, Lively conducts an expert tour, taking us from Eden to Sissinghurst and into her own backyard, traversing the lives of writers like Virginia Woolf and Philip Larkin while imparting her own sly and spare wisdom. "Her body of work proves that certain themes never go out of fashion," writes the New York Times Book Review, as true of this beautiful volume as of the rest of the Lively canon.

    Now in her eighty-fourth year, Lively muses, "To garden is to elide past, present, and future; it is a defiance of time."

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateJun 12, 2018
    ISBN9780525630739
    Unavailable
    Life in the Garden
    Author

    Penelope Lively

    Penelope Lively is a novelist, short story writer and author of children's books. Her novels have won several literary awards including the Booker Prize for Moon Tiger in 1987, the Carnegie Medal for The Ghost of Thomas Kempe in 1973, and the Whitbread Award for A Stitch in Time in 1976.

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    Reviews for Life in the Garden

    4/5

    34 ratings4 reviews

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    • 4/5
      "The two central activities of my life - alongside writing - have been reading and gardening."Penelope Lively gives readers a range of both fictional and actual gardens, including a brief history of gardening from Eden through Babylon, Pompeii, Rome, the Impressionists, and beyond. She focuses on English Gardens, barely mentioningany interactions, influences, or sharing with more geometric French Gardeners.While inspiring to gardeners of all abilities, her insistence to "rip out" any plantshe no longer likes or doesn't think fits in feels odd - why not save its little plant lifeby simply digging it out carefully and sharing with a friend. Simply affixing a "Free to a Good New Home" sign would likely have plants gently plucked from her curbside.More concerning is her unqualified praise of American pioneers for "taming" the wilderness with farms and gardens.She does not at all recognize that land given to white pioneers was stolen from the Native Peoples and the people cruelly and forcibly removed or killed.
    • 5/5
      Leven in de tuin door Penelope LivelyEen geweldig boek, prachtig vormgegeven, dat gerust dubbel zo dik had mogen zijn. De verteltrant van Lively is gezellig, onderhoudend, grappig en informatief. Elk nieuw hoofdstuk begint met een zwart-wit tekening van Katie Scot (dé Katie van bijvoorbeeld Het Plantenboek) wat dit boek visueel al tot een echt hebbeding maakt.Penelope houdt van lezen, schrijven én tuinieren; en dat allemaal al van kindsbeen af. Het zijn de dingen die haar al haar ganse leven hebben geïnteresseerd en hebben beziggehouden. Haar ideeën, kennis, wetenswaardigheden en visie deelt ze in deze parel met ons.Gaande van de tuin uit haar kindertijd in Caïro, de tuin van Virginia Woolf (én die van haar minnares), de waterlelies van Monet tot de boeken van Jane Austen en haar kleine (Penelope) stadstuin van nu in Londen.Ze kijkt naar schilderijen, catalogussen, open tuinen, ze leest literatuur, gedichten en boeken van specialisten over tuinieren. Maar bovenal zit ze een leven lang met haar handen in de chocoladekleurige aarde, ze leeft in het nu en kijkt uit naar de toekomst. Ze ondergaat de seizoenen en kweekt een echte tuiniersblik (wat dat is legt ze graag zelf uit). Dat alles maakt dit boek tot een smakelijke brok kennis en literatuur. Zoals zij ook zelf opmerkt, je leest het als een schrijver echt zelf tuiniert.Haar geweldige (Britse) humor maakt dit boek helemaal tot een feest. Ik heb geregeld luidop zitten schaterenlachen. En de beste ‘mopjes’ heb ik onderlijnd.Met mijn koer vol potten ben ik gezegend of te beklagen (afhankelijk van met wie je me vergelijkt) maar mijn blik naar buiten zal nooit meer hetzelfde zijn. En dat door dit betoverende boek dat naast goesting in lezen (de literatuurlijst achteraan ga ik uitspitten) ook geweldig veel kriebels in de vingers brengt.Lezen, schrijven en tuinieren is een geweldige combinatie, Lively heeft dat hier voortreffelijk bewezen. Voor wie (nog) niet aan het tuinieren is een waarschuwing: dit boek plant zaadjes…
    • 5/5
      Oh dear. Penelope Lively has got me wanting to grow roses again. Well, and also plant mixed borders, fill containers with mounds and cascades of flowers, and arrange some sort of a “water feature.” I enjoyed this tremendously! In her wide ranging little book Lively looks at gardens in literature, painting, and real life, considering the ways they are used to communicate ideas, convey character, and suggest social position, and also how they may simply give hints about the inclinations of their creators. She talks about gardeners, from the famous and wealthy, with grand estates and staff to do the digging, to the more modestly situated, with patio or allotment gardens. Memories of her own gardening experiences and those of family and friends are interspersed with reflections on literary gardens, public gardens, garden writers, garden designers, etc. From the philosophically abstract to the grubbily mundane, she explores gardens across time and countries, forcing me to add quite a few new books to my already too-lengthy tbr lists! Absolutely delightful.
    • 3/5
      This slim volume is part gardening book, part memoir, by one of my favorite fiction authors, Penelope Lively. Lively, now well into her 80s, cites reading and gardening as the two most important activities in her life. She explores the importance of gardening to other authors, the role of gardens in society over the years, and the relationship between gardening and social class, weaving in personal history along the way.This book reads like a series of chats with a friend over cups of tea. Although I can’t say I learned anything new about my friend Penelope, she did help me understand what makes gardening such a satisfying pursuit. I enjoyed her references to gardening in literature and her ability to discern when an author is a true gardener vs. just throwing words around for effect. She also pointed me towards more substantial gardening books that have been on our shelves for a long time, but that I’ve never really examined.Despite the cozy good feelings engendered by this book, I struggled with how to rate it. It’s a “niche” work, unlikely to have universal appeal. The writing was sometimes repetitive, especially certain catch phrases employed a few times too often. It would be of greatest interest to gardeners (obviously), and some prior knowledge of English gardening history and style would enhance the reading experience.