Appunti per uno studio del cuore umano

This is the first Penelope Lively book I read having bought it at a sale recently. To me the book spoke personally. Being an older woman myself, as one who has retired from a lifelong much-loved job a couple of years ago, I was deeply moved by the fact that, inspite of living in another country, in

I usually love Lively's books but this one was a slight disappointment. https://piningforthewest.co.uk/2018/0...

Spiderweb is the very well done story of Stella, a newly-retired cultural anthropologist. She buys a small cottage in a small village in Somerset, England. Stella shows the reason for studying small communities and kinships all over the world. Possibly because she already knew she "never had much ta Leggi tutto

Conventionality – that seems to me the key word. Stella Brentwood has lived studiously beyond convention. There has been her career as a social anthropologist, working and travelling alone, studying and observing small isolated societies in the Nile delta, Malta and the Orkneys which seem to live ve Leggi tutto

The insatiable need to flee, to not stay in any single place for very long, is not an uncommon theme to me as it has been my own life. Moving every five years and never growing too attached to people lest I leave, without a doubt the premise of this novel struck deep. However, the intrigue of this n Leggi tutto

A sixty five year old retired social anthropologist buys a cottage in the West Country where she begins to put down some roots for the first time in her peripatetic life. Ironically she singularly fails to read the runes and a horrifying act of cruelty arises. In this novel Lively once more contempl Leggi tutto