Consequences

Josephine Bailey gives a subtle, respectful, and low-key performance of this elegiac novel about the consequences of a chance encounter. Matt, an artist, and Lorna, a reluctant debutante from an entirely different milieu in class-bound prewar England, meet on a park bench, fall in love, and marry despite family consternation. Matt dies in the war, Lorna in childbirth, and the story moves to their daughter, and then to her daughter. One could quibble that Bailey sometimes fails to convey effectively the many shifts in the narrative indicated on the page by space breaks, which can make for some disorientation. Lively tends to use that white space to create a drama of what is not being said. In every other way, though, it's a lovely production. B.G. (c) AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine

March 19, 2007
Booker and Whitbread prize–winner Lively begins her 14th novel, a multigenerational love story, in a London park in 1935, ends it nearly 70 years later after covering several lifetimes of love and heartbreak. The story starts when Lorna Bradley and Matt Faraday meet in St. James Park; they are instantly drawn to one another despite her upper-crust upbringing and Matt's "tradesman" profession. After their marriage, they settle in the country where Matt works as an engraver and Lorna fulfills her domestic role as a wife and mother to their daughter, Molly. It is an idyllic situation until Matt is drafted and sent to Egypt, where he is killed in action. Lorna and young Molly relocate to London, and Lorna works with Matt's friend Lucas at his small printing press. Predictably, Lucas and Lorna marry, but she dies giving birth to Simon. The narrative diverges as grown-up Molly finds employment as a library assistant and has an affair with a wealthy man who fathers her child, Ruth. Grown and with children of her own, Ruth's curiosity about her ancestors sends her on a journey that brings the novel full circle. Lively (A Stitch in Time
; Moon Tiger
) has crafted a fine novel: intricate, heartbreaking and redemptive.