Just finished reading this. Classic Lively - she brings things full circle

Gods of small things: Penelope Lively writes about a particular milieu with crisp clarity and a gimlet eye for the motivations and experiences of the English middle classes. Consequences is a conventional romance with the addition of meditations on time, memory and found objects. Literary fiction at its most compelling and digestible.

A really enjoyable read that gripped me to the end

Oh, how I love Penelope Lively and the way she writes. Totally unsentimental, and full of articulate emotion, dry wit, and interesting smart, brave characters. It doesn't supersede "Passing On" as my favorite PL novel, but it comes pretty close.

Penelope Lively is brilliant. Little tiny books that are crammed full of gorgeous sentences and big ideas. This one kept me off balance, wondering where it was going until the very end -- when I realised its beautifully textured mosaic was a portrait of Family and all that that freighted word can entail.

Loved this book, but no surprise. It's full of people knowing and not knowing odds and ends about their parents and grandparents, something which fascinates me. And it has something I really love: the sense that the characters are engaged in time-travel while firmly rooted in their own time. The time-travel happens through stories and books and engravings and walls and cottages and cemeteries,and feels completely real to me. Wish I were still reading it.

Another Penelope Lively jewel. A reflection on life, love, the seeming randomness of what happens to us, the role of memory, history, war, peace and all that makes us what we are for better or worse. Decidedly English middle-class if you like that sort of thing, which I do. Some of the characters seemed a tad sketchy and hard to tell apart. Nowhere near as good as "Moon Tiger" but an enjoyable read.

I liked this book quite a bit but also thought it missed being great.

I enjoyed the peaceful cadence of this book and the way the author captured the essence of what was going on "behind the scenes" during World War II.

A chance meeting in St. James's Park begins young Lorna and Matt's intense relationship. Wholly in love, they leave London for a cottage in a rural Somerset village. Their intimate life together--Matt's woodcarving, Lorna's self-discovery, their new baby, Molly--is shattered with the arrival of World War II. In 1960s London, Molly happens upon a forgotten newspaper and a seemingly small moment that leads to her first job and, eventually, a pregnancy by a wealthy man who wants to marry her but whom she does not love. Thirty years later, Ruth, who has always considered her existence a peculiar accident, questions her own marriage and begins a journey that takes her back to 1941, and a redefinition of herself and of love.

This book reminded me of the sweeping World War II sagas of Rosamund Pilcher, but lacking Pilcher's gripping plot development and enjoyable characters. I found this book to be aimless and ultimately dull, not to mention completely unsurprising. Perhaps this latter facet is the appeal of Lively, whose work is new to me. But if I'm going to engage in escapist reading, I hope for a little more bite to keep me tuned in and Consequences had little to offer except a light, shallow tale of three women with light, shallow personalities. But it should be noted that the audiobook reader, Josephine Bailey, was not to blame in the least. I could listen to her all day and will look for her books in the future.