My Pick of the Week!

British author Penelope Lively’s intriguing new novel Consequences traces the lives and loves of three generations of women in one family. The story begins on the eve of the Second World War when Lorna meets working class artist Matt Faraday. They fall in love and marry, but their idyllic life comes to an end when Matt is killed in the Battle of Crete in 1941.The story continues with the life of Lorna’s daughter Molly and her granddaughter Ruth and recounts the changes in their lives and the society in which they live from the post war period until the nineteen-eighties. It is a sensitive, poignant story of three very unique women and the way in which their lives are shaped by chance encounters. At the same time, it is a perceptive and thought-provoking commentary on the social changes in England since the war.