Casualties of War
An affair on the eve of World War II casts a long shadow.

Reviewed by Mark Slouka
Sunday, June 17, 2007

CONSEQUENCES

By Penelope Lively

Viking. 258 pp. $24.95

Readers familiar with Penelope Lively's 13 earlier novels, including the Booker Prize-winning Moon Tiger and, most recently, The Photograph, might reasonably expect her 14th, Consequences, to display some of the same strengths, among them a clear, unadorned prose style and a feel for the ways in which the past intrudes on the present. Alas, they will be disappointed.

There are many reasons for this. The first has to do with the simple fact that Consequences, the sweeping saga of three generations of women, their lives and loves, is a bit too sweeping to do justice to the generations involved, which pass before our eyes with something approaching Old Testament velocity: Matt and Lorna beget Molly who. . . . Rushing from 1935 to the present, the saga leaps decades ("Peter is City Editor now") or collapses them into chronological shorthand, both of which limit the reader's identification with the characters. "Over the years, there had been the flat in Notting Hill and the one in Earls Court and the maisonette in Primrose Hill and the cottage in Highgate and the house in Kentish Town. They had migrated around London, with Ruth a size bigger each time, and with equipment that leaped from Lego and furry animals to stereo systems and posters of rock groups." This isn't narrative; this is history in the microwave.

There are other troubles, some -- though not all -- attributable to the pressure of having to cram so many groceries into so modest a basket. A short list might include a style almost completely shorn of metaphor (and the enriched seeing that metaphor provides), a voice largely innocent of irony (and humor), an attraction to homogeneous blocks of characters (all the boys in Matt's school are blind to art; all the parents see the art teacher, Mr. Avery, the same way), and, finally, a positive aversion to ambiguity, to the complexities and contradictions of human motivation, which are to mature literature what carbon is to life.

In their place we get a terrible sincerity, the kind that suggests not honesty but shallowness, which quickly devolves into predictability. The culprit here is Lively's narrator's voice, a voice that manages to say both too much and not enough, that does not brook interruptions, that explains -- carefully, thoroughly -- all the things that do not need explaining while tactfully avoiding those that might provide some genuine insight. The effect is akin to standing on a conveyor belt with one's third-grade teacher as she points out upcoming attractions and tells us what we should think of them. "They were young," Lively tells us, "they were modern young, they saw themselves as in apposition to the assumptions and attitudes of conventional society." This voice permeates everything. It makes people say things like, "Ha ha! But what's with this forensic study of society, Ruth?" or engage in dialogue such as this:

" 'Happiness is the real world -- the physical world, often.'

" 'The splendor in the grass -- that sort of thing?'

" 'That sort of thing. Sheer relish for what's on offer. An animal sort of feeling. Kicking up the heels.'

"Molly nods. 'Sunshine. Stars. A flower. A color.' "

The splendor in the grass, that sort of thing, is precisely what's missing here, just as the wilderness was missing from James Fenimore Cooper's fiction, whose characters, come to think of it, would have felt right at home with a line like, "For the first time I knew blood lust."

Still, it's a mild outbreak of the other kind of lust that reveals this novel's troubles most effectively. Bear with me. Ruth, trapped in a loveless marriage to Peter, travels to Greece, where she meets Manolo, her guide, and Al, "a hired gun" photojournalist with "a cool assessing stare." It's a tough call. "Manolo has the face of a Greek icon -- dark brown, almond-shaped eyes, aquiline nose." His English (thank God) is "immaculate." "He unfurls a verbal banner." His eyes (have I mentioned his eyes?) are "huge, brown and complicit," and they flash -- often. He is passionate. We know this because he takes his hands off the wheel and bangs the dashboard a great deal to make a point or to signal enthusiasm. But it's not enough to beat Al. Al has "fallen into the Amazon . . . been sniped at by Afghan tribesmen," and, best of all, "he has that warm, toasty, male smell." Game, set and match.

But just when we think that there may be some well-deserved bodice ripping in Ruth's immediate future and some actual emotion in ours, we get this:

"He sets about undressing her -- kindly, efficiently . . . lifting her T-shirt (and she raises her arms obediently, like a child), undoing her bra.

" 'That's the girl,' he says. . . .

"She is astonished. . . . She is amazed at how easy it is, in the event, how -- well, how unembarrassing, how inevitable. The process is familiar -- oh dear me, yes -- but is also radically different." The process? Oh dear me, no.

Even today, one can still occasionally find apartment buildings in New York whose elevator floor indicators skip the number 13. In this case, the 14th might be the better choice. ·

Mark Slouka's most recent novel is "The Visible World." A contributing editor at Harper's magazine, he is the chair of Creative Writing at the University of Chicago.