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A review by eileen9311
Dancing Fish and Ammonites: A Memoir by Penelope Lively
3.0
Parts of this memoir had great appeal, while others did not! I did save several quotes to savor.
'Can’t garden. Don’t want to travel. But can read, must read. For me, reading is the essential palliative, the daily fix. So I have my drug, perfectly legal and I don’t need a prescription.’
‘Am I envious of the young? Would I want to be young again? On the first count – not really, which surprises me. On the second – certainly not, if it meant a repeat performance. I would like to have back vigor and robust health, but that is not exactly envy. And, having known youth, I’m well aware that it has its own traumas, that it is no Elysian progress, that if can be a time of distress and disappointment, that it’s exuberant and exciting, but it is no picnic.’
‘What is at issue is, it seems to me, is a new and disturbing relationship with time. It is as though you advanced along a plank hanging over a canyon: once, there was a long, reassuring stretch of plank ahead: now there is plank behind, plenty of it, but only a few plank paces ahead. Once, time was the distance into which you peered – misty, impenetrable, with no discernible landmarks, but reassuringly there.
'Can’t garden. Don’t want to travel. But can read, must read. For me, reading is the essential palliative, the daily fix. So I have my drug, perfectly legal and I don’t need a prescription.’
‘Am I envious of the young? Would I want to be young again? On the first count – not really, which surprises me. On the second – certainly not, if it meant a repeat performance. I would like to have back vigor and robust health, but that is not exactly envy. And, having known youth, I’m well aware that it has its own traumas, that it is no Elysian progress, that if can be a time of distress and disappointment, that it’s exuberant and exciting, but it is no picnic.’
‘What is at issue is, it seems to me, is a new and disturbing relationship with time. It is as though you advanced along a plank hanging over a canyon: once, there was a long, reassuring stretch of plank ahead: now there is plank behind, plenty of it, but only a few plank paces ahead. Once, time was the distance into which you peered – misty, impenetrable, with no discernible landmarks, but reassuringly there.