A review by caroparr
Dancing Fish and Ammonites: A Memoir by Penelope Lively

4.0

Read this "not quite a memoir. Rather... the view from old age" especially for the spectacular first essay, which discusses what it feels like to be 80, physically, intellectually and emotionally. Though she no longer wants to travel and can only do a bit of gardening, she can still read (despite macular degeneration which she alludes to but does not dwell on). "Reading in old age is doing for me what it has always done - it frees me from the closet of my own mind." She writes beautifully about memory, a frequent subject in her novels, and her essay on reading and writing makes me wonder if I really should gird my loins for Henry James.