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Perfect Happiness
Perfect Happiness is the fifth novel by Booker Prize winning author Penelope Lively Frances, happily married for many years, and suddenly plunged into mourning.
Her international celebrity husband Steve has died leaving her unprepared and vulnerable. At first she is completely submerged in her own loss until, shocked into feeling by the unexpected revelations and private sufferings of others, she is drawn agonizingly into new life - not into perfect happiness but into the sunlight of new hope. Penelope Lively's moving and beautifully observed novel illuminates two terrifying taboos of the twentieth-century - death and grief.
'A triumph' Spectator
Her international celebrity husband Steve has died leaving her unprepared and vulnerable. At first she is completely submerged in her own loss until, shocked into feeling by the unexpected revelations and private sufferings of others, she is drawn agonizingly into new life - not into perfect happiness but into the sunlight of new hope. Penelope Lively's moving and beautifully observed novel illuminates two terrifying taboos of the twentieth-century - death and grief.
'A triumph' Spectator
233 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1983
9 people are currently reading
222 people want to read
About the author
Penelope Lively
129 books942 followersPenelope Lively is the author of many prize-winning novels and short-story collections for both adults and children. She has twice been shortlisted for the Booker Prize: once in 1977 for her first novel, The Road to Lichfield, and again in 1984 for According to Mark. She later won the 1987 Booker Prize for her highly acclaimed novel Moon Tiger.
Her other books include Going Back; Judgement Day; Next to Nature, Art; Perfect Happiness; Passing On; City of the Mind; Cleopatra’s Sister; Heat Wave; Beyond the Blue Mountains, a collection of short stories; Oleander, Jacaranda, a memoir of her childhood days in Egypt; Spiderweb; her autobiographical work, A House Unlocked; The Photograph; Making It Up; Consequences; Family Album, which was shortlisted for the 2009 Costa Novel Award, and How It All Began.
She is a popular writer for children and has won both the Carnegie Medal and the Whitbread Award. She was appointed CBE in the 2001 New Year’s Honours List, and DBE in 2012.
Penelope Lively lives in London. She was married to Jack Lively, who died in 1998.
Her other books include Going Back; Judgement Day; Next to Nature, Art; Perfect Happiness; Passing On; City of the Mind; Cleopatra’s Sister; Heat Wave; Beyond the Blue Mountains, a collection of short stories; Oleander, Jacaranda, a memoir of her childhood days in Egypt; Spiderweb; her autobiographical work, A House Unlocked; The Photograph; Making It Up; Consequences; Family Album, which was shortlisted for the 2009 Costa Novel Award, and How It All Began.
She is a popular writer for children and has won both the Carnegie Medal and the Whitbread Award. She was appointed CBE in the 2001 New Year’s Honours List, and DBE in 2012.
Penelope Lively lives in London. She was married to Jack Lively, who died in 1998.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 42 reviews
November 27, 2025
I enjoyed this immensely; which instantly raises several different strands of thought. Firstly, I didn't find the style easy to follow, especially in the first half; it took a while to understand our main character, Frances, who has recently lost her husband, "eight months, two weeks and one day on." And our author switches the view point back and forth between Frances and her sister-in-law, Zoe. It's a little jarring to absorb all the details and threads of both these two characters' lives, but Lively is setting up various contrasts in the circumstances of the two women. Although Frances is suffering from the obvious loss of her much loved husband, Steven, Zoe also suffers from several losses, noticeably the ending of a long-term relationship with Eric, to a (much) younger woman. Eric has decided he wants children, he's fiftyish.
So there are several plot strands and various other characters drawn into or eliminated from Frances' life, and all are there to construct various moral perspectives, which is what I so immensely like about Lively's novels. Although I've not read her famous Moon Tiger, I have read - Passing On, The Photograph, and The Road to Lichfield. I read through my reviews and noticed that in each, I mention this quality of a moral structure. In Perfect Happiness, I think it is Frances who says, 'I can see why people become Christians,' she of course is talking about the comfort which comes from knowing that a loved one, is not gone forever, but that there is some kind of spiritual or after-life. At the same time, however, Lively is also making it quite clear that in the absence of Christian faith Frances has to struggle to find meaning in a world without her partner. And one of the loud and clear moral lessons, is that it would be all too easy to become embittered and morose and endlessly miserable. Frances stoutly refuses to give in to this type of behaviour.
Here are a couple of paragraphs from the first chapter, where Frances is thinking about past memories. She realises that happiness is acutely associated with places as she remembers a Dorset hillside, Steven's hand on her back and then we move with her to the present:
Unhappiness, now so intimately known, is a very different matter. Unhappiness is now, not then at all. Unhappiness is like being in love: it occupies every moment of every day. It will not be put aside and like love it isolates; grief is never contagious.
Loss clamped her every morning as she woke; it sat its grinding weight on her and rode her, like the old man of the sea. It roared in her ears when people talked to her so that frequently she did not hear what they said. It interrupted her when she spoke, so that she faltered in mid-sentence, lost track. A little less now; remissions came and went. The days stalked by, taking her with them.
Frances' daughter, Tabitha, in her first year at Cambridge experiences a casual rejection from her first love interest, and in a similar way to Frances moves through her days in "grief". So we understand, how Lively is examining the various types of loss we will inevitably live through. Then, moving in a different direction, she examines how some people live lives of perpetual loss.
In the characters of Philip and Marsha Landon, Lively explores how a couple are unable to find happiness. They insert themselves into Frances' life in the new neighbourhood she moves to; both are deeply unpleasant humans in how they construct their lives. Philip for example believes himself to be permanently unfavoured, nothing ever works out for him. He apparently knows Steven from school and he hated how Steven was a high-flyer even then. Philip, in an utterly revolting episode sets out to take his revenge on Steven's wife, some 40 years later.
That section reminded me strongly of two other writers, both in Lively's generation, both British; Margaret Drabble who wrote about men using sex as a means of establishing power, see The Garrick Year, 1964, and the second writer, Dorris Lessing, in "One Off the List" from the short story collection - A Man and Two Women: Stories, (1963), Lessing also demonstrates, how men don't have a problem in using sex for domination and revenge. Lessing's story is possibly the most unpleasant I have ever read about relationships between men and women. I was struck by how all three writers refuse to shy away from some of the nitty gritty stuff in patriarchy and how this identifies Lively as very much a feminist writer. I could relate multiple other elements of a feminist theme from Perfect Happiness, but I would be giving too much away.
It is suffice to say there are several plots weaving through the story of Frances' bereavement and how she manages to come through to the other side. She finds work, she makes new relationships primarily with other women, and she is blessed with her two children, Tabitha and Harry, and the long standing relationship with Zoe, who is Steven's sister. Towards the end there is even a new blossoming relationship with Morris, a music critic. I found him hard to like, and I would have preferred Lively's plot to focus on other developments in Frances' life, but I guess he is there as a sort of balance and a reassuring feature in the difficult topic of grief and death.
Yes, I loved this book. As I said at the beginning I find Lively to be such a strong moral compass. It's not often that you find writers who deliver in terms of entertainment as well as life-guidance.
So there are several plot strands and various other characters drawn into or eliminated from Frances' life, and all are there to construct various moral perspectives, which is what I so immensely like about Lively's novels. Although I've not read her famous Moon Tiger, I have read - Passing On, The Photograph, and The Road to Lichfield. I read through my reviews and noticed that in each, I mention this quality of a moral structure. In Perfect Happiness, I think it is Frances who says, 'I can see why people become Christians,' she of course is talking about the comfort which comes from knowing that a loved one, is not gone forever, but that there is some kind of spiritual or after-life. At the same time, however, Lively is also making it quite clear that in the absence of Christian faith Frances has to struggle to find meaning in a world without her partner. And one of the loud and clear moral lessons, is that it would be all too easy to become embittered and morose and endlessly miserable. Frances stoutly refuses to give in to this type of behaviour.
Here are a couple of paragraphs from the first chapter, where Frances is thinking about past memories. She realises that happiness is acutely associated with places as she remembers a Dorset hillside, Steven's hand on her back and then we move with her to the present:
Unhappiness, now so intimately known, is a very different matter. Unhappiness is now, not then at all. Unhappiness is like being in love: it occupies every moment of every day. It will not be put aside and like love it isolates; grief is never contagious.
Loss clamped her every morning as she woke; it sat its grinding weight on her and rode her, like the old man of the sea. It roared in her ears when people talked to her so that frequently she did not hear what they said. It interrupted her when she spoke, so that she faltered in mid-sentence, lost track. A little less now; remissions came and went. The days stalked by, taking her with them.
Frances' daughter, Tabitha, in her first year at Cambridge experiences a casual rejection from her first love interest, and in a similar way to Frances moves through her days in "grief". So we understand, how Lively is examining the various types of loss we will inevitably live through. Then, moving in a different direction, she examines how some people live lives of perpetual loss.
In the characters of Philip and Marsha Landon, Lively explores how a couple are unable to find happiness. They insert themselves into Frances' life in the new neighbourhood she moves to; both are deeply unpleasant humans in how they construct their lives. Philip for example believes himself to be permanently unfavoured, nothing ever works out for him. He apparently knows Steven from school and he hated how Steven was a high-flyer even then. Philip, in an utterly revolting episode sets out to take his revenge on Steven's wife, some 40 years later.
That section reminded me strongly of two other writers, both in Lively's generation, both British; Margaret Drabble who wrote about men using sex as a means of establishing power, see The Garrick Year, 1964, and the second writer, Dorris Lessing, in "One Off the List" from the short story collection - A Man and Two Women: Stories, (1963), Lessing also demonstrates, how men don't have a problem in using sex for domination and revenge. Lessing's story is possibly the most unpleasant I have ever read about relationships between men and women. I was struck by how all three writers refuse to shy away from some of the nitty gritty stuff in patriarchy and how this identifies Lively as very much a feminist writer. I could relate multiple other elements of a feminist theme from Perfect Happiness, but I would be giving too much away.
It is suffice to say there are several plots weaving through the story of Frances' bereavement and how she manages to come through to the other side. She finds work, she makes new relationships primarily with other women, and she is blessed with her two children, Tabitha and Harry, and the long standing relationship with Zoe, who is Steven's sister. Towards the end there is even a new blossoming relationship with Morris, a music critic. I found him hard to like, and I would have preferred Lively's plot to focus on other developments in Frances' life, but I guess he is there as a sort of balance and a reassuring feature in the difficult topic of grief and death.
Yes, I loved this book. As I said at the beginning I find Lively to be such a strong moral compass. It's not often that you find writers who deliver in terms of entertainment as well as life-guidance.
July 7, 2025
Second book I read by Penelope Lively, I am mightily impressed by her writing even though at times it feels not necessarily outdated, rather from a time when people had precise words for thoughts and emotions.
Frances finds herself 8 months widowed and still navigates grief, life and domestic life, being a mother to two adopted children and so much more.
I love how the plot isn’t what you’d expect, and closely resembles life (but using better, precise, words)
Frances finds herself 8 months widowed and still navigates grief, life and domestic life, being a mother to two adopted children and so much more.
I love how the plot isn’t what you’d expect, and closely resembles life (but using better, precise, words)
October 12, 2019
This is one of the best novels I've read about grief. Frances is a relatively young widow, after her well-known husband Steven died of a heart attack. Penelope Lively explores the idea of 'perfect' - in the sense of the past (past perfect, imperfect) and in the context of a marriage and a bereavement. Frances' thoughts and actions are utterly credible as she negotiates the first year of living alone. Initially, her realisations are dark and resigned.
"When you have learned finally and too late that life cannot be arranged and does not make sense, then there is nothing left but to move through days as they come, passively. Noting, simply, what happens."
By the end of the novel she is able to find satisfactions in independence and relationships, accommodating her memories and her sorrow into the context of her new life.
The novel is fleshed out by the other characters - Steven's sister, Zoe, and Frances' two adopted children, Tabitha and Harry, about whom there are also secrets to be revealed. Characters and stories from the past mingle with our understanding of the present.
Lively is a writer of great skill and insight. I'm delighted to have discovered this (1983) novel that I hadn't read before.
"When you have learned finally and too late that life cannot be arranged and does not make sense, then there is nothing left but to move through days as they come, passively. Noting, simply, what happens."
By the end of the novel she is able to find satisfactions in independence and relationships, accommodating her memories and her sorrow into the context of her new life.
The novel is fleshed out by the other characters - Steven's sister, Zoe, and Frances' two adopted children, Tabitha and Harry, about whom there are also secrets to be revealed. Characters and stories from the past mingle with our understanding of the present.
Lively is a writer of great skill and insight. I'm delighted to have discovered this (1983) novel that I hadn't read before.
January 10, 2016
I have read most of the books written by Penelope Lively this one been my favourite. I have really enjoyed rereading it and discovered new aspects and nuances of the characters I missed the first time round. I found the way she writes about bereavement very moving realised that the whole story is based about loss of some description but how we eventually learn to adapt.
June 16, 2025
This was a 3.5 book - well written with insight but ultimately a bit dated and not happy the dog was killed off!
March 21, 2017
Love her treatment of the passage of time, memories, changing seasons, different viewpoints -- well-rounded characters, thought-provoking, a bit melancholy and sometimes grieving, the past communing with objects and places.
Always a photograph, a memory, a mother and a daughter who are separated by lack of understanding, miscommunication and misperceptions. History and archaeology and layers of fading memories.
Another perfect read. Time and again I tell myself, If I were able to write this well, this is what I would want to say.
Always a photograph, a memory, a mother and a daughter who are separated by lack of understanding, miscommunication and misperceptions. History and archaeology and layers of fading memories.
Another perfect read. Time and again I tell myself, If I were able to write this well, this is what I would want to say.
January 25, 2012
Penelope Lively has a hundred ways to describe sunlight coming through a window - like a chunk of topaz on the floor, for heaven's sake! Her writing affirms the act of living and drawing breath. I love her!
March 27, 2015
Another perfect read from Penelope Lively. This writer never sets a foot wrong.
July 14, 2017
Read several times, but never fades in its impact and enjoyment.
September 1, 2019
Beautifully and sincerely written. The deeper into this book you go the more emotionally engaged you become. Also very funny in places.
Loss, love, identity.
Loss, love, identity.
December 3, 2023
A bereaved wife, submerged in grief, gradually finds her way back into life. I re-read another novel (Moon Tiger) by Lively a few months ago and found it so good that I took this one, too, from my shelves and added it to the TBR queue.
I last read it in 1993, when I was myself nearly destroyed by grief, the past in poisonous tatters, the future sucked dry of hope or meaning. I remembered how this book comfortingly expressed much of what I was feeling and thinking.
Today I’m a different person, hopeful, often joyous. The few griefs I have include warm, loving memories that make the past glow. So I have read this book differently. It brilliantly describes unbearable grief, bravo, but also, for its various characters, it captures the wonderful fleeting moments of perfect happiness that we all experience, moments we remember and treasure.
The title is right; it is a book about perfect happiness.
I last read it in 1993, when I was myself nearly destroyed by grief, the past in poisonous tatters, the future sucked dry of hope or meaning. I remembered how this book comfortingly expressed much of what I was feeling and thinking.
Today I’m a different person, hopeful, often joyous. The few griefs I have include warm, loving memories that make the past glow. So I have read this book differently. It brilliantly describes unbearable grief, bravo, but also, for its various characters, it captures the wonderful fleeting moments of perfect happiness that we all experience, moments we remember and treasure.
The title is right; it is a book about perfect happiness.
August 3, 2014
"Happiness, of course, is forever bound to place, to the physical world. We are never happy now, only then. Walking then on a Dorset hill, wind lifting the hair, and a hand, suddenly, on one's back ...Sunlight sifting down through the apple tree in the garden of Pulborough, lying like coins among the daisies of the lawn. Happiness is out there, back there, in association with these sights and sounds, and to retrieve it is to retrieve them also, to bring them crowding into the dark bedroom at three in the morning: mocking. Perfect happiness, past perfect, pluperfect.
"Unhappiness, now so intimately known, is a very different matter. Unhappiness is now, not then at all. Unhappiness is like being in love: it occupies every moment of every day. It will not be put aside and like love it isolates; grief is never contagious."
"Unhappiness, now so intimately known, is a very different matter. Unhappiness is now, not then at all. Unhappiness is like being in love: it occupies every moment of every day. It will not be put aside and like love it isolates; grief is never contagious."
April 20, 2021
Best book I've read for a very long time.
December 1, 2022
Aging and death; holding on to the past versus letting go - these are the themes that recur in Lively's novels. These themes overlay my own literary sweet-spot, which tends to favour the nostalgic and sensually-descriptive, kitchen sink dramas, and stories of the elderly or tragic. The characters in 'Perfect Happiness' fit the bill and are often bracingly no-nonsense, yet human, and capable of being brought up short in moments of humbling self-realisation.
In 'Perfect Happiness' we have the widow and her sister-in-law coming to terms with loss. It echoes 'The Road to Lichfield' (1977), where again we encounter old places and pathways haunting the recently-bereaved. There are historical monuments similar to those that figure in 'Treasures of Time' (1979) and 'Judgment Day' (1980), albeit over a wider area that includes London, Cambridge, the Scottish Highlands and Venice.
The story focuses on how Frances comes to terms, including through relocation to a new home. Her derangement in dreamy and unreal Venice has shades of Thomas Mann (Death in Venice) and even Ian McEwan's 'The Comfort of Strangers' (1981), but the tone elsewhere is more akin to quintessentially English postwar domestic drama (lots of chivvying others along, between bouts of brooding) or in its more prosaic moments, evening TV soap. The creepy Philip belongs to the latter cast and I found him curiously unbelievable for Lively. In contrast, Frances and her allies (Frances and Ruth) present the reader with a believably cautious network who each take opportunistic care of one another, as we might expect from people unprepared for how they might navigate the void.
Not everything works. Some plotlines don't really go anywhere, including the reappearance of an ex, and elsewhere tangential questions around parentage. Potentially these instances connect to a bigger theme on the unpredictability of trauma, but they are like fireworks out of vision: registered but irrelevant. They add to a litany of minor tragedies that Frances experiences, which in succession ends up feeling slightly more contrived than in previous books. The tone remains poignant but it's a close-run thing at times. Nevertheless, Lively is a master at rescuing moments from bathos with a terse turn of phrase.
I tend to save up Penelope Lively as a treat, between my perseverance with more hit-and-miss authors. Every one of her six novels I have read to date paints with the eye of a Dutch Master, with clarity of vision and bracing direct connection to human experience. 'Perfect Happiness' isn't a Van Eyck, but it's not too far off.
In 'Perfect Happiness' we have the widow and her sister-in-law coming to terms with loss. It echoes 'The Road to Lichfield' (1977), where again we encounter old places and pathways haunting the recently-bereaved. There are historical monuments similar to those that figure in 'Treasures of Time' (1979) and 'Judgment Day' (1980), albeit over a wider area that includes London, Cambridge, the Scottish Highlands and Venice.
The story focuses on how Frances comes to terms, including through relocation to a new home. Her derangement in dreamy and unreal Venice has shades of Thomas Mann (Death in Venice) and even Ian McEwan's 'The Comfort of Strangers' (1981), but the tone elsewhere is more akin to quintessentially English postwar domestic drama (lots of chivvying others along, between bouts of brooding) or in its more prosaic moments, evening TV soap. The creepy Philip belongs to the latter cast and I found him curiously unbelievable for Lively. In contrast, Frances and her allies (Frances and Ruth) present the reader with a believably cautious network who each take opportunistic care of one another, as we might expect from people unprepared for how they might navigate the void.
Not everything works. Some plotlines don't really go anywhere, including the reappearance of an ex, and elsewhere tangential questions around parentage. Potentially these instances connect to a bigger theme on the unpredictability of trauma, but they are like fireworks out of vision: registered but irrelevant. They add to a litany of minor tragedies that Frances experiences, which in succession ends up feeling slightly more contrived than in previous books. The tone remains poignant but it's a close-run thing at times. Nevertheless, Lively is a master at rescuing moments from bathos with a terse turn of phrase.
I tend to save up Penelope Lively as a treat, between my perseverance with more hit-and-miss authors. Every one of her six novels I have read to date paints with the eye of a Dutch Master, with clarity of vision and bracing direct connection to human experience. 'Perfect Happiness' isn't a Van Eyck, but it's not too far off.
November 14, 2025
Another Penelope Lively triumph. I've enjoyed all of her novels that I've read so far, but the ones I like most are those where we spend a lot of time in the head of the principal character, getting to know and understand them deeply.
In this one, we follow 49-year old Frances as she tries to navigate grief and life following the sudden death of her husband, Steven. The title refers partly to the distortive effect of memory, where happy times stand out more than others. But others there certainly are, and as Frances reflects, she realises that while her marriage was good, it had its downsides as well.
As ever, Ms Lively's perceptive and closely observational skills come shining through. Take this scene, where Frances considers the effect of Steven's life coming to a sudden stop while hers continues. She meets people, visits places, and experiences things that Steven did not.
"She returned again and again to this; alongside it ran the reflection that she, already, week by week and month by month, was turning into a person Steven had never known."
This passage also exemplifies another common theme which runs through Ms Lively's work - the impact of memory, and the interaction of past and present. Not just the more obvious point that the past influences the present, but the reverse as well, that events in the present can have a huge impact on our perception and understanding of the past.
I liked Frances as a character - she was someone I felt I could really root for. But like all of Ms Lively's protagonists, she has her flaws. She occasionally does things - and one thing in particular - which appear out of character, but which are understandable in context. The principal supporting characters - Frances' sister-in-law Zoe, and her adopted children Tabitha and Harry, are well drawn too, and their personal stories are cleverly interweaved with Frances'. And there was a twist here that I really didn't see coming.
Finally, Ms Lively deftly resists the temptation to give us a neatly tied up, happy ending. It looks as if we are heading that way, but it doesn't happen. But the ending we do get is full of hope nevertheless, and overall I found this an optimistic and uplifting story, beautifully written and sensitively told.
In this one, we follow 49-year old Frances as she tries to navigate grief and life following the sudden death of her husband, Steven. The title refers partly to the distortive effect of memory, where happy times stand out more than others. But others there certainly are, and as Frances reflects, she realises that while her marriage was good, it had its downsides as well.
As ever, Ms Lively's perceptive and closely observational skills come shining through. Take this scene, where Frances considers the effect of Steven's life coming to a sudden stop while hers continues. She meets people, visits places, and experiences things that Steven did not.
"She returned again and again to this; alongside it ran the reflection that she, already, week by week and month by month, was turning into a person Steven had never known."
This passage also exemplifies another common theme which runs through Ms Lively's work - the impact of memory, and the interaction of past and present. Not just the more obvious point that the past influences the present, but the reverse as well, that events in the present can have a huge impact on our perception and understanding of the past.
I liked Frances as a character - she was someone I felt I could really root for. But like all of Ms Lively's protagonists, she has her flaws. She occasionally does things - and one thing in particular - which appear out of character, but which are understandable in context. The principal supporting characters - Frances' sister-in-law Zoe, and her adopted children Tabitha and Harry, are well drawn too, and their personal stories are cleverly interweaved with Frances'. And there was a twist here that I really didn't see coming.
Finally, Ms Lively deftly resists the temptation to give us a neatly tied up, happy ending. It looks as if we are heading that way, but it doesn't happen. But the ending we do get is full of hope nevertheless, and overall I found this an optimistic and uplifting story, beautifully written and sensitively told.
June 12, 2022
"Knowledge lurked, now, of unsampled depths; the world was shadowed in places where there had been untrammelled sunlight."
I had planned to write a "proper" Independence Day write-up on Nick Joaquin's collection of essays about Philippine heroes, but this book dropped into my lap and was too utterly compelling from the first page onwards that I was carried away by the music of Lively's prose. She is quickly becoming a favorite author, and I'm utterly amazed at this display of her breadth and scope. How different this second Lively is from my first (MOON TIGER)! And yet, in its core, I found the same penetrating insight and melodious turns of phrase, blessed with the gift of finding beauty in the ordinary.
"I have known what it is to be happy... Even what has gone is sustenance, to have been happy once is a privilege. I am not damned but blessed."
The book shows how lives are changed by loss. It's the chronicle of an inner geography: a man dies, and we are shown in intimate detail how his widow, sister, and daughter are able to forge on ahead. And I know that summary sounds dismal, but I promise you this book isn't! (Look at this passage: "I shall get through this... because I shall grit my teeth and put up with it. But I would rather go to sleep for six months.") Ha!
This is no depressing read, but neither is it a stereotypical happy-ever-after children's book. Lively is a fighter and an optimist, and so are her characters. She is able to portray grief with accuracy, but focuses more on the joyful love that inevitably gives birth to the pain of loss. She writes of days filled with silent screaming in the shadows, but also of moments full of light. Lively offers no easy, tidy answers, but possible horizons. Go do new things, meet new people, explore new places, she urges. For life goes on. And this grateful reader closed the book reluctantly, feeling that the novel was a beautiful gift.
There are many kinds of independence. And while no life is totally free from tears, this book reminds us that in the midst of sorrow, there is much beauty yet in living.
I had planned to write a "proper" Independence Day write-up on Nick Joaquin's collection of essays about Philippine heroes, but this book dropped into my lap and was too utterly compelling from the first page onwards that I was carried away by the music of Lively's prose. She is quickly becoming a favorite author, and I'm utterly amazed at this display of her breadth and scope. How different this second Lively is from my first (MOON TIGER)! And yet, in its core, I found the same penetrating insight and melodious turns of phrase, blessed with the gift of finding beauty in the ordinary.
"I have known what it is to be happy... Even what has gone is sustenance, to have been happy once is a privilege. I am not damned but blessed."
The book shows how lives are changed by loss. It's the chronicle of an inner geography: a man dies, and we are shown in intimate detail how his widow, sister, and daughter are able to forge on ahead. And I know that summary sounds dismal, but I promise you this book isn't! (Look at this passage: "I shall get through this... because I shall grit my teeth and put up with it. But I would rather go to sleep for six months.") Ha!
This is no depressing read, but neither is it a stereotypical happy-ever-after children's book. Lively is a fighter and an optimist, and so are her characters. She is able to portray grief with accuracy, but focuses more on the joyful love that inevitably gives birth to the pain of loss. She writes of days filled with silent screaming in the shadows, but also of moments full of light. Lively offers no easy, tidy answers, but possible horizons. Go do new things, meet new people, explore new places, she urges. For life goes on. And this grateful reader closed the book reluctantly, feeling that the novel was a beautiful gift.
There are many kinds of independence. And while no life is totally free from tears, this book reminds us that in the midst of sorrow, there is much beauty yet in living.
January 6, 2020
I am on a Penelope Lively kick and started this book without knowing its story line. I got worried when I realised it was the story of a recent widow who had lost her husband in their late 40's. The story picks up 6 months after his death, as she attempts to rebuild her life without him, while their 2 adopted children are both at university. While of course this is rather depressing terrain, the book is ultimately hopeful and even triumphant.
A strong theme throughout the book is the way that our memories change in light of our current situation or knowledge. Frances, the protagonist, is constantly amending her appraisal of her life with Steven, her deceased husband - sometimes in his favour and at other times not. There is also a specific focus on how the ghosts of our memories haunt tangible locations; this is most strongly demonstrated when Frances must travel to Venice to attend to her injured son. The last time she was in Venice was on her honeymoon, and the first trip nearly pulls her out of current time. The theme re-emerges again and again - for example when Frances' daughter passes a crosswalk that she had earlier walked with her boyfriend who has since broken things off; there is the memory of 'perfect happiness' and also the current experience of complete misery.
As the example above details, Frances is not the only character who is reappraising and attempting to resolve past feelings and experiences with current ones. A cast of interesting characters all have their (mostly secret) struggles, and the author handles them with compassion. This is a short book, beautifully told, and ending on a positive and hopeful note.
A strong theme throughout the book is the way that our memories change in light of our current situation or knowledge. Frances, the protagonist, is constantly amending her appraisal of her life with Steven, her deceased husband - sometimes in his favour and at other times not. There is also a specific focus on how the ghosts of our memories haunt tangible locations; this is most strongly demonstrated when Frances must travel to Venice to attend to her injured son. The last time she was in Venice was on her honeymoon, and the first trip nearly pulls her out of current time. The theme re-emerges again and again - for example when Frances' daughter passes a crosswalk that she had earlier walked with her boyfriend who has since broken things off; there is the memory of 'perfect happiness' and also the current experience of complete misery.
As the example above details, Frances is not the only character who is reappraising and attempting to resolve past feelings and experiences with current ones. A cast of interesting characters all have their (mostly secret) struggles, and the author handles them with compassion. This is a short book, beautifully told, and ending on a positive and hopeful note.
October 12, 2020
Perfect Happiness is one of Penelope Lively’s earlier adult novels (she had enjoyed a successful and popular career as a children’s writer for some time before she wrote her first book for grown ups), but has all of the hallmarks of her mature style: fully rounded, complex characters, great subtlety of emotional and psychological insight, a mastery of plot and an abiding interest in the relationship between the present and the past; ‘time is not only what you do with months or weeks, it is to do with feelings and what you know and who you are’ as Tabitha reflects towards the end of the novel.
Perfect Happiness is a novel about bereavement and the uncertainties of the route through mourning, grief and recovery. Frances Brooklyn’s husband Steven, an internationally known public intellectual dies suddenly, leaving his wife to confront his sudden absence and several other family secrets that emerge after his death. The novel is so rich in content and incident that it seems hard to believe that it is only just over 200 pages long, and it is a tribute to the quality of Penelope Lively’s writing and craftsmanship that that she can cover so much fertile emotional ground in such a short novel (see also: Anita Brookner).
Perfect Happiness is a novel about bereavement and the uncertainties of the route through mourning, grief and recovery. Frances Brooklyn’s husband Steven, an internationally known public intellectual dies suddenly, leaving his wife to confront his sudden absence and several other family secrets that emerge after his death. The novel is so rich in content and incident that it seems hard to believe that it is only just over 200 pages long, and it is a tribute to the quality of Penelope Lively’s writing and craftsmanship that that she can cover so much fertile emotional ground in such a short novel (see also: Anita Brookner).
December 27, 2025
This book only confirms my opinion of Penelope Lively as a compassionate but unsentimental chronicler of a certain type of life. The intellectual classes - journalists, historians, archeologists, public personalities - and their families.
Rachel loses her husband and mourns for him, while at the same time bristling at the notion that she would henceforth be defined as the widow of a public intellectual. She tries to make a new life for herself- a new house, a new job, even some disquieting new neighbors who attempt to pull her into their domestic quarrels. Her sister-in-law, Zoe, an independent spirit and globe-trotting journalist, supports her, but has to deal with her own private fears and griefs. And Rachel's children also give her cause for worry : her son is wounded during a random terrorist attack and her daughter is consumed by the sadness of a love affair gone bad.
All of this is described in a way that resonated with me. The disorienting effects of grief, the unpredictable course of mourning, the consolation of art and intellectual pursuits - even the challenges of supporting and helping adult children who want and need to go their own way.
Recommended!
Rachel loses her husband and mourns for him, while at the same time bristling at the notion that she would henceforth be defined as the widow of a public intellectual. She tries to make a new life for herself- a new house, a new job, even some disquieting new neighbors who attempt to pull her into their domestic quarrels. Her sister-in-law, Zoe, an independent spirit and globe-trotting journalist, supports her, but has to deal with her own private fears and griefs. And Rachel's children also give her cause for worry : her son is wounded during a random terrorist attack and her daughter is consumed by the sadness of a love affair gone bad.
All of this is described in a way that resonated with me. The disorienting effects of grief, the unpredictable course of mourning, the consolation of art and intellectual pursuits - even the challenges of supporting and helping adult children who want and need to go their own way.
Recommended!
October 4, 2025
I love Penelope Lively's writing of English life of a certain time, and she imbues so much of the individuals character and travails in perfect dialogue and descriptions of inner life.
in this tale, we meet Frances, the grieving widow of a TV personality who has two adopted children moving into adulthood. Grief is profoundly explored just as Frances stumbles lost around Venice after discovering her son has been hurt there while travelling in a terror attack ( Venice, the place of her honeymoon).
The interaction with her best friend (her sister in law) is moving, as is the eventual disclosure of the novel.
Penelope Lively never fails to satisfy my reading demand for a novel of characters and lives in which you become absorbed in their fate.
in this tale, we meet Frances, the grieving widow of a TV personality who has two adopted children moving into adulthood. Grief is profoundly explored just as Frances stumbles lost around Venice after discovering her son has been hurt there while travelling in a terror attack ( Venice, the place of her honeymoon).
The interaction with her best friend (her sister in law) is moving, as is the eventual disclosure of the novel.
Penelope Lively never fails to satisfy my reading demand for a novel of characters and lives in which you become absorbed in their fate.
May 13, 2024
You read the book chiefly perhaps for its texture. Penelope Lively writes beautifully, and the novel is about the protagonist moving through her bitter grief for her husband, who has died of a heart attack. The title is not ironic, but refers to the tendency to situate perhaps illusory perfect happiness in the past. Her husband was a strong willed man and often away from her on business, the dominant partner in the marriage. Part of her grieving is asserting her own preferences, in friends as in other things.
She has a very close relationship with her sister-in-law, and both her children are adopted. Secrets emerge as to the adoption towards the end of the novel.
She has a very close relationship with her sister-in-law, and both her children are adopted. Secrets emerge as to the adoption towards the end of the novel.
May 27, 2022
A story of women and their experiences of love, loneliness, and especially grief. Having unexpectedly lost her husband, in whose shadow Frances has happily existed, she now works her way toward a new life, a single life. Sister-in-law and best friend Zoe takes a very different path, yet they are closely bound by genuine affection as well as a shared secret. This is a beautifully written, deeply examined portrait of the path of grief.
November 17, 2023
It’s a bit amazing that this is only Penelope Lively’s fifth book. While it’s not my favorite among her work, it still showcases Lively’s ability to turn an arresting phrase, her complex plotting and characters, and the way she captures both the intense pain and the intense joy of life (and often both at the same time). Maybe not the first place to start reading Lively, but still highly worthy of a read.
July 18, 2024
Frances has to find her way through life after having been suddenly widowed. Lively contemplates time, history, grief, and love through Frances, her children, her sister-in-law, a creepy neighbor, and a very nice man about whom I will say no more. Each is fully described in just a few pages. Another gem from Penelope Lively.
September 5, 2021
This is an exceptional book, exploring and explaining the nature of grief and bereavement, within a very credible family setting.
The only reason for not giving it five stars is that Lively seems constrained to write about upper-middle class women: I'd love to see her spread her wings a bit.
The only reason for not giving it five stars is that Lively seems constrained to write about upper-middle class women: I'd love to see her spread her wings a bit.
March 24, 2022
moving and compassionate portrayal of fully realized characters facing pain and pursuing life and connection.
May 22, 2024
much too grim for me.
October 9, 2024
A beautiful read by the marvellous Penelope Lively.
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August 25, 2025I have loved some other LIvely books but could not get involved in this one. Maybe the theme of grief. I don’t know. My fault not Lively’s.
December 4, 2025
Some moments it lifted to inspiration, but it fell and landed a bit on the nose. Worth reading, but not rereading.
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