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A review by ilse
Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively, Zora Freiová
5.0
Tiger tiger burning bright
The power of language. Preserving the ephemeral; giving form to dreams, permanence to sparks of sunlight.
How can a novel in which the protagonist is lying in a hospital room awaiting death be so voraciously vivid?
Lately watching Fortunes of war (with Emma Thompson and Kenneth Branagh based on Olivia Manning’s Balkan and Levant trilogies, the desert scenes in Egypt joined with reading excerpts from the memoir of the British soldier-poet Keith Douglas on El Alamein (in [b:November 1942: An Intimate History of the Turning Point of the Second World War|64645706|November 1942 An Intimate History of the Turning Point of the Second World War|Peter Englund|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1680507145l/64645706._SY75_.jpg|97830108] by Peter Englund), I was reminded of this brilliant novel, Penelope Lively’s, effervescent, soaringly lyrical prose still burning incandescently in my memory, like the green coil that embodies the eventful life of Claudia Hampton, the protagonist:
She lies awake in the small hours. On the bedside table is a Moon Tiger. The Moon Tiger is a green coil that slowly burns all night, repelling mosquitoes, dropping away into lengths of grey ash, its glowing red eye a companion of the hot insect-rasping darkness. She lies there thinking of nothing, simply being, her whole body content. Another inch of the Moon Tiger feathers down into the saucer.
(Evelyn Axell, Tiger Woman (Autoportrait), 1964)
This book left me awestruck as it had simply everything I enjoy and admire in a novel (who said a reader needs a likeable protagonist when you can have the arrogant, eloquent and astonishingly smart Claudia Hampton instead?). Endlessly quotable, it is a sensuous feast of iridescent sentences, incisive insights and erudite reflections on history and science, the power of language, the complexity of family relationships and the indomitability of love and dreams.
I created a new shelf for this kind of intense books to remind myself of the need to revisit them, inspired by a friend’s comment pinpointing Javier Marias’ work as ‘high voltage’ literature.
Thank you again Paul, for making me aware of this sublime writer.
The power of language. Preserving the ephemeral; giving form to dreams, permanence to sparks of sunlight.
How can a novel in which the protagonist is lying in a hospital room awaiting death be so voraciously vivid?
Lately watching Fortunes of war (with Emma Thompson and Kenneth Branagh based on Olivia Manning’s Balkan and Levant trilogies, the desert scenes in Egypt joined with reading excerpts from the memoir of the British soldier-poet Keith Douglas on El Alamein (in [b:November 1942: An Intimate History of the Turning Point of the Second World War|64645706|November 1942 An Intimate History of the Turning Point of the Second World War|Peter Englund|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1680507145l/64645706._SY75_.jpg|97830108] by Peter Englund), I was reminded of this brilliant novel, Penelope Lively’s, effervescent, soaringly lyrical prose still burning incandescently in my memory, like the green coil that embodies the eventful life of Claudia Hampton, the protagonist:
She lies awake in the small hours. On the bedside table is a Moon Tiger. The Moon Tiger is a green coil that slowly burns all night, repelling mosquitoes, dropping away into lengths of grey ash, its glowing red eye a companion of the hot insect-rasping darkness. She lies there thinking of nothing, simply being, her whole body content. Another inch of the Moon Tiger feathers down into the saucer.
(Evelyn Axell, Tiger Woman (Autoportrait), 1964)
This book left me awestruck as it had simply everything I enjoy and admire in a novel (who said a reader needs a likeable protagonist when you can have the arrogant, eloquent and astonishingly smart Claudia Hampton instead?). Endlessly quotable, it is a sensuous feast of iridescent sentences, incisive insights and erudite reflections on history and science, the power of language, the complexity of family relationships and the indomitability of love and dreams.
I created a new shelf for this kind of intense books to remind myself of the need to revisit them, inspired by a friend’s comment pinpointing Javier Marias’ work as ‘high voltage’ literature.
Thank you again Paul, for making me aware of this sublime writer.