Cleopatra's Sister

by Penelope Lively

A palaeontologist by choice--and perhaps due to the accidental discovery of a fossil fragment on the north coast of England when he was six years old--Howard Beamish is flying to Nairobi on a professional mission when his plane is forced to land in an imaginary country called Callimbia. On assignment to write a travel piece for Sunday magazine, journalist Lucy Faulkner is on the same flight. What happens to Howard and Lucy in Callimbia is one of those accidents that determine fate, that can bring love and take away joy, that reveal to us the precariousness of our existence and the trajectory of our lives.

Genres: Fiction, Novels, Africa, Contemporary, Literary Fiction, British Literature, Audiobook

288 pages, Paperback

First published April 14, 1993

About the author

Penelope 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.

Reviews

[S K Gillespie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m not sure where I heard about Penelope Lively. It could have been Pickle Me This, and I know I got the recommendation for Maureen Corrigan’s Leave Me Alone, I’m Reading (which I have nearly finished and will review soon) there, so it’s likely. Anyway, I ordered Cleopatra’s Sister: Novel, A and Consequences from the library. I finished Cleopatra’s Sister in a day and a half. It would have been sooner, but apparently you have to feed children and mop floors and stuff like that instead of just reading 24/7. Pity.


Cleopatra’s Sister is the story of a palaeontologist called Howard Beamish. It is also the story of a journalist called Lucy Faulkner. It is also the story of a little known place called Callimbia, which is at the time of the book, gripped with civil unrest. These three stories – each one a perfectly formed tale in itself, roll into each other when both Lucy and Howard and a planeful of other passengers are told engine trouble is forcing their flight to Namibia to make a stop over in Callimbia. By the end of the story, Howard and Lucy’s stories have become entwined.

On the surface, this book seems to be a very generalised romance adventure type. Boy and girl are thrown together in turmoil, love blossoms, trouble heightens, all live happily ever after. But Cleopatra’s Sister includes so much more. Lively’s dialogue is perfectly formed and is seamlessly fitted into the story. Esoteric mysteries, religion, philosophy, science, human nature, history and the day to day dramas of employment and real estate – everything worth writing about it slipped into this novel. And you wont even notice that Lively is taking you on a rollercoaster ride through time (from 520 million years ago to now) and space (from the restrictive, working class London of Lucy’s youth to the global travel both characters embark on in adulthood) because her style is so marvelously readable. I loved every moment of this book and even when the action isn’t moving at a rapid pace (and at places it’s hard to keep up) the book rolls on smoothly. I’m incredibly glad that Lively is such a prolific writer – I’m definitely going back for more!

[WndyJW · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was a fun romance story, smart, and well written like all Penelope Lively novels.

I’d forgotten that I read this book 13 years ago and listened to an audio version this week. My rating remains 3 stars. Of the 6 Penelope Lively novels I’ve read this is probably my least favorite, but I enjoyed it.

[Colin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another winner from Penelope Lively, although unfortunately, reading it means I’ve now read all her novels and short stories. Still, there are a couple of non-fiction titles to read, so all is not lost. I first read Moon Tiger and some of her children’s books many years ago, and it wasn’t until fairly recently that I discovered that there were many more books still waiting for me. I’ve been trying to think why I love her books so much; they’re all beautifully written, and they are all (however domestic the theme) page-turners in the best sense. Her characters have real depth and complexity and her favourite theme of time and the effect of the past on the present is eternally fascinating. Cleopatra’s Sister has all those virtues, together with a real sense of jeopardy as friendship and then love develops out of the most inauspicious circumstances - a group of British hostages held in desperate conditions in an imaginary North African state.

[Theresa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Serendipity at work. Penelope Lively's books are so readable and listenable, too, in this case. She sets up two very different characters and their backstories, then throws them together in quite a dramatic way in a hostage situation.

[Sneh Pradhan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A rare confident narrative , incisive , with profound insight laced in every sentence and drawn with the most intellectually indulgent humor , it's one of the only few books whence you are hooked from the very first sentence till the last . And one of the fewer books , again which I just didn't want an end to ......you want the story to go on and on ......as if the story has become a part of your life .............. Sigh !!!!!!!!!!

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first half is absolutely splendid in its analysis of couples and relationships. Christina and I both saw a lot of ourselves here. The second half, once the story got started, was less satisfying. It reminded me a bit of Ann Patchett's Bel Canto (which it preceded by many years), but less compelling. (Bel Canto, btw, is an absolutely splendid book.)

[Harrie Farrow · Rating 2 out of 5]

I tried to read this book, liked the idea of it, just kept waiting for the story to begin, even after several chapters in. All narrative and lots of it over written. Gave up.

[Margaret · Rating 4 out of 5]

I find it hard to say what made this book such an enjoyable read. The characters seem to be normal people, with nothing extraordinary, but the story kept me interested until the final chapter.

For the first half of the book, we have two different life stories that do not link – the paleontologist Howard Beamish and the journalist Lucy Faulkner. Then, when both are travelling to Africa, the plane is forced to land in Callimbia, a country in political turmoil. After some initial confusion, the passengers realize that they are now hostages and, if their governments do not comply with the demands, there may be deaths.

Both Howard´s and Lucy’s lives are quite ordinary and when they are trapped in Callimbia there are no great heroic gestures or dramatic statements. Even their love story evolves in quite a simple and soft way. I think this is what makes the book a good read - it shows how normal people, like you or me, would probably react when confronted with a difficult situation. Everything seems real and real is just fine!

[Blaire · Rating 4 out of 5]

On one level this is a story of two people who are thrown together when the plane they are on has engine trouble and lands in a North African country in the midst of a military coup. They and their fellow passengers are taken hostage and during their ordeal they fall in love. The thing that makes the book interesting is that the story is set in the context of an extended rumination about the effect of fate and accident, predestination and free will, caprice and historical forces, on the trajectory of our lives. The writing at times is sublime. I can't say that the reading experience was entirely enjoyable, but I do admire what Ms. Lively has done with this book.

[Bryan Murphy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautifully told tale, which I re-read recently. It would have been totally captivating if the author hadn't kept harping on about chance and coincidence: after all, Bulgakov had already done Chaos Theory in "the Master and Margarita".

[Lynn · Rating 1 out of 5]

verbose. redundant. dense. I made it to page 19. disappointed.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is the story of how Howard, a paleontologist, and Lucy, a left-leaning journalist, meet and fall in love when their flight to Nairobi needs to land in the fictional country of Callimbia and the British passengers are taken hostage.

Penelope Lively always has an interesting construct to her stories and this one is no exception. Howard studies tiny creatures who are evolutionary 'dead-ends' - they didn't manage to survive, thrive, adapt or mutate. They fascinate him due to the myriad possibilities of alternate outcomes - other ways that the world could have evolved, but didn't. Cleopatra's sister is another alternate outcome; if she had managed to keep Marc Antony for herself, ancient history would have changed.

So the story told here must be considered within this lens. What if Lucy and Howard hadn't been on the same flight? What if they hadn't been British? What if one or both of them doesn't make it out again? Does their story become a dead end as well, an unfulfilled alternate future?

The story of their time as hostages is fascinating, in part because the reader has no greater information than the passengers themselves. However, it takes the author over 100 pages to get to this part of the story, and those 100 pages read like backstory (because that's what it is). To dedicate 1/3 of the book to backstory before anything of interest happens is a bit much.

It also comes off as somewhat racist that this is a middle eastern/African country with a despot (although he is half English it turns out). Some things in this book don't age well.

[Hannah Robins · Rating 3 out of 5]

Part One of the book alternates between an increasingly interesting past lives and not really loves of the two protagonists, Howard and Lucy, with a history of the fictional country Callimbia. I found it easy to put down, and was reminded of what Ursula K Le Guin described as 'expository lump' in her book for would be writers, Steering the Craft. Callimbian history bored me until the last bit when we learn the family background of the man who turns out to be the head of state. There are little inserts of words from part two in italics at times, which just annoyed me.
Some spoilers below, but not the ending.
Part Two was immediately more engaging, as the protagonists embark on the same plane which is diverted to Callimbia and leads to a story of romance in a hostage situation. Entrancing to start with this then becomes increasingly horrific, and there is a great deal of fear and tension to encounter.
Clearly from other reviews some people loved this book, they clearly have different tastes from me. I identified strongly with the two well drawn characters of Lucy and Howard, but I am not a thriller reader and this is a dull first half followed by an increasingly gripping second half.
I generally love Penelope Lively, and have recently reread with great pleasure How it all Began and The Photograph,
My favourite of her children's books is The House at Norham Gardens.

[Marne Wilson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is in two very distinct halves. In the first half, which is classic Penelope Lively, we get alternating chapters of the lives of Howard Beamish and Lucy Faulkner, listing all of the events that led to their being on the same flight to Nairobi.

In the second half, their flight makes an emergency landing in Callimbia and they and the other passengers are taken hostage. This part sounds very much like the hostage accounts we often read in the 80’s. It has a ripped-from-the-headlines-of-1993 feel, but it’s not actually very interesting (as most hostage crises are tedious to live through), and it just doesn’t feel very Lively-esque at all.

Of course, Howard and Lucy fall in love, and this is handled very nicely (and very Britishly, as they never even kiss because they don’t feel they have sufficient privacy), but the whole thing just doesn’t quite come together. A much better book that keeps going in the vein of the first half is Consequences, which I read earlier this year, and which I wish I had just read again instead of this!

[Melanie Harvey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Intelligently written novel playing with conceits of time and circumstance and the impact of fate on characters lives. I enjoyed the development of the two central individuals and their budding relationship against the backdrop of civil unrest and chaos. There was considerable humour in the early part of the book and tension in the latter stages fortified by the reader’s complete lack of knowledge to predict a likely outcome. Somehow the book failed to spark into life for me, there were elements of the novel I really enjoyed but the pace was occasionally extinguished by a lack of a resolution; the continuous and purposeless moving about from place to place in Callimbia may have underpinned the theme of shifting and arbitrary fates but had the impact of a novelistic dead end for me. I also have a bit of a pet hate for imaginary countries in novels, and it felt a little two dimensional as a place for me to accept it. I was hopeful that the title would lead to a greater development of that theme but this was perhaps a little too subtle for me. I do enjoy Lively’s writing however and though this was a 3.5 for me, I will continue to read her other novels.

[Sarah Melissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first part of the book alternates development of two characters in distinct universes, as well as a history of Callimbia, an imaginary country near Egypt, from about 60 BC. Callimbia is then ruled by Berenice, Cleopatra’s sister. Berenice’s father tries to assassinate her because she briefly usurped his throne, but her lover rescues her. The country undergoes many changes through the years, ending up in the late 20th century ruled by a mad dictator.
The two characters, Howard and Lucy, come from different class backgrounds. Howard grows up comfortable, and is a paleontologist passionate about his work who has less luck in romantic relationships. Lucy is a journalist who grew up dirt poor managing the fortunes of her family, as her mother is rather passive. Both Howard and Lucy believe in contingency (for Howard this is essential to his work, as he studies fossils in evolutionary paths which were dead ends) and neither believe in God. This second thing is again critical for Howard, a necessity for any romantic relationship.
Howard and Lucy converge in a gripping hostage drama in Callimbia, and fall in love.

[Andrea · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a smart romance but really not as deep or innovative as so many readers seem to think. Howard, a paleontologist, and Lucy, a journalist, are both intelligent, likable people who have never felt the deep spark of mutual love and intellectual connection. When an accident of history finds them both trapped in the fictional North African country of Callimbia. Callimbia’s history is narrated in the first part of the book parallel to Howard and Lucy’s individual stories. In the second part, the three “characters” become enmeshed. A main theme of the book is the question of whether the events that determine our lives are accidents of fate, some kind of destiny, or something else. Lovely’s thinking in this subject is pretty pedestrian really and she hammers the point much too hard in long sections of dialogue and narrative commentary. I enjoyed the book but was a little disappointed by its triteness.

[Mary Lou · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is vintage Lively in terms of observations about the coincidence of life, the odd turns of fate that could have made someone’s life so otherwise. The sister in the title is invented, as is the country over which she ruled. It's a place on the border between modern Egypt and Libya, and the place where the twists and turns of life, that whole build-up of choices one has made and the chance happenings of the world around people, bring two characters together who otherwise may not have met. The story sometimes gets a bit lost in Lively’s comments on randomness, on the fragility of existence, on the nature of tinpot dictators and the soldiers and sycophants who follow them. Fortunately she did not allow the worst to happen to either of the main characters, but she allowed the reader to think it might happen right up until the end.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Can you imagine a hostage situation and no one has a cell phone? That’s what we have in this book. And guess when it was written? 1994. Shocked? I️ am.

Aside from that, I️ enjoyed this book mostly because the narrator is one of my favorites. The first half discussed 2 of the characters’ back stories along with the Callimbia history. And then part 2 had all 3 intersect. I️ felt like it was 2 different types of writing between part 1 and part 2; the pace and the focus of the characters changed so much. And I️ didn’t enjoy part 2 as much because of that. Still an interesting story about fate and one’s destiny.

[Alib · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first half of the book introduces three characters, two are people - Lucy, a journalist and Howard, a paleontologist - the third is a country - Callimbia - which it seems is as imaginary as the people. Just as the three stories start to feel they are not going anywhere (especially the story of Callimbia) they come together when Lucy and Howard’s flight makes an emergency landing in Callimbia during a coup. The passengers are taken hostage and Lucy and Howard get to know each other in difficult circumstances. I love Penelope Lively’s writing - some underline-able sentences and a theme of coincidence - how life unfolds as one random event leads to another…

[Stephen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lively serves up a similar stew of family favourites: a good handful of history, a shimmering twist of nostalgia, a pinch of mistrust, but always with a last generous glug of goodwill. Only occasionally does she get over-generous on the eastern sour sweet romantic interest. 'Cleopatra's Sister' isn't too far off the recipe. However, the addition of rather more peril than usual, in turn, along with doe-eyed devotion of two people centripetally drawn to one another like the spiral of an ammonite, makes this read much more like mainstream Hollywood than the usual knowingly worldly internalised monologues she normally treats us to.

Honestly, though, Lively presses as many of the right buttons as a synthpop virtuoso - fossils, questions or fate and destiny, historical geopolitics, introspection and even a pilot who almost shares my name... Like one of those personalised Christmas books that felt like magic as a kid, this feels like it could have been written for me.

That said, it was just denied a Michelin star rating by the slightly overdone romantic interest and detour into taut thriller (something I sense may be neither mine not Lively's home ground, based on its handling here). A lesser jewel of the Nile maybe, but a long way from Nil Points

[Katharine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very enjoyable study of the conjunction of chance, history and character that brought two people together. The invented country and the life stories of the protagonists Howard and Lucy were fun to read about but the story really got going once they both arrived in Callimbia.The danger, discomfort, claustrophobia and unpredictability of the situation in which they find themselves is so vividly written that at times I was holding my breath. A gripping read.

[Sandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oddly, all the I remembered of this was that it was not one of my favourites; I remembered nothing of the story or the characters, and found myself irritated, slightly, at the deviations to Berenice.

Then, when we reached what happened after the airport (no spoilers) I remembered not so much the facts but the extraordinarily vivid evocation of tension - the sense of which has occasionally returned to me without having any idea from where.

[Sian Williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was disappointed withe this novel it started so well and so cleverly and then just seemed to lose its hold on my imagination and i really struggled to finish it which is so annoying because I felt like I was wasting my time reading this when there are so many books i could've been reading. I was in awe for the first half of the book but then it just became silly after the hijacking . I much preferred Heat wave the first book that I read by P.L.

[Denisa · Rating 1 out of 5]

given that I've really liked this author's other works, i had expectations of this one. i did not imagine this would be a love story, a rather bad one. it makes sense given the context, however the books feels very rushed and severely unpolished. did she want us to be informed of the history of Callimbia at the beginning? what was its correlation to this weird hostage fantasy? this could've been so much better approached.

[Monica Bessler · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am not sure. I didn't like that one that much. It might have helped if in the introduction it would have made clear that the land Callimbia was fiction,but cleopatras sister was not. I found the diffuse border between history and fiction confusing. I found the two characters rather boring and undifferentiated.

[Robin Helweg-Larsen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wonderful first few chapters, very strong, but fades away. The female protagonist, a journalist, though very competent and aggressive in the UK, becomes a wishywashy nonentity with no journalism in her in the situation she finds herself in (which is never recognised by the author as a potential career-making opportunity).

[Akin]

Reminds me a lot of Ann Patchett’s Bel Canto.

As a romance (which it is), rather unconventional approach. The fictional Callimbra seems a placeholder of all kinds of things; while the principal characters do overtly think about this close to the end, it nevertheless remains a bit of a McGuffin. Pleasant way to pass the time, but not sure I would reread it.

[Anne Matheson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is book is about Howard the paleontologist's relationships, and the difference between the first two women he lived with ( and ended up not liking) and the one he finally fell in love with. Told in a slightly dry way, it ends on a very hopeful note.

[Graham Cowley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating

With great skill, Penelope Lively brings several apparently quite separate stories together in a tense and absorbing situation. we are kept in suspense u til the end. I loved it.