A Stitch in Time by Penelope Lively

A Stitch in Time by Penelope Lively
Buy A Stitch in Time by Penelope Lively at Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com
Category: Confident Readers
Reviewer: Linda Lawlor
Summary: Maria, a rather solitary girl, goes on holiday with her parents to Lyme Regis where she finds herself intrigued by the noisy, unruly family next door. At the same time she becomes increasingly absorbed in the history of a sampler stitched by a girl the same age as herself. Why are there no photos of Harriet after 1865?
Buy? Yes	Borrow? Yes
Pages: 256	Date: September 2011
Publisher: Harper Collins Children's Books
ISBN: 978-0007443277
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Hunting for fossils on the Dorset coast is a pleasure which has delighted generations of families. And when Maria is taken by her father and mother to Lyme Regis for the summer holidays, she quickly becomes fascinated by the myriads of long-dead creatures which are still visible, fixed forever in the local grey-blue stone. Her interest in the history of the area leads her to make a friend – a rare occurrence for Maria, who can be painfully shy at times, and it involves her in a mystery. What sad event prevented Harriet from finishing the sampler? And how is it that Maria is aware of a dog barking, when no one else can hear it?

This book, which won the Whitbread Prize in 1976, has been re-issued as an Essential Modern Classic, and it will delight many a young girl as it delighted their mothers before them. At first glance it might be tempting to reject this book out of hand, because it does not fit the popular profile for children's books today. It is a slow and gentle tale, with only one brief but heart-stopping scene of drama when Maria believes an old tragedy is about to be re-enacted. But not every child wants a constant diet of high-tech chases and battles with villains, or glittering success and discovery at the talent show. This story is for the reflective, sensitive reader, who will resonate with the emotions felt by our heroine Maria, and who sometimes envies others the ease with which they relate to people.

Maria's personality has been clearly moulded by her parents, who treat her with a kindly but distant affection. They dutifully take her to stately homes and museums, but would obviously far rather relax with their newspaper or needlework. They are secretly pleased to be relieved of their parental duties when Maria begins to spend the majority of her time with the family next door, to such an extent that they are even willing to put up with the occasional invasion of their tranquil lives by the noisy, boisterous brood. Ms Lively has a wonderful time poking fun at the bewildered couple, who had been rather surprised to find themselves parents, and much of the humour in the book comes from the contrast between them and the utterly disorganised, insouciant family next door.

Another source of amusement comes from Maria herself. Finding her opinions not particularly wanted by her parents, she takes to chatting with inanimate objects instead. She enjoys meeting the petrol pump, who is affable, but the large tabby cat who wanders in and out of their house is less kind, having a tendency to criticise Maria in terms reminiscent of her parents and teachers. She is forced to retreat to her secret place in the ilex oak until she makes her first tentative moves towards friendship with actual human beings.

The emphasis in this book is on character, rather than plot, and we get to learn a great deal about Maria. She admits, at the end of the book, that she has trouble distinguishing between reality and imagination, and this leads to her preoccupation with the long-dead Harriet, with the nature of time, and how the past intrudes into the present.

Harriet is like the ammonites in the rock, she thought, not here any more but here in a ghostly way, because of the things she left behind.

At the end of this charming book the reader is left with a question. Did Maria imagine everything to do with Harriet, or is the truth more subtle than that? The thoughtful reader will find herself pondering the question long after the book has been put back on the shelf.

Further reading suggestion: Another couple of very good books which examine the effects of time on people are A Year Without Autumn by Liz Kessler and, for slightly younger readers, Time Train to the Blitz by Sophie McKenzie.

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You can read more book reviews or buy A Stitch in Time by Penelope Lively at Amazon.com.

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