Reviews

City of the Mind by Penelope Lively

brucefarrar's review against another edition

4.0

Architect Matthew Hallard is distracted. He’s engaged in a large building project, but as he gazes about the site he sees not only the London of his own time in 1990, but buildings that take him back to the 1820s or to the Renaissance. As his mind wanders from his present cares: the break-up of his marriage, his eight-year-old daughter Jane, encounters with an unscrupulous developer, and the good-looking young woman he chanced to encounter in a sandwich shop, his story is interleaved with the stories of other Londoners from other times: an air-raid warden during the blitz, a Victorian natural scientist, Elizabethan explorer Martin Frobisher, and several unnamed children from the past.

Lively ponders the fragile bonds of human affection, estrangement, loss, hope and industry as it swirls through the city and through time. Ultimately it’s a reassuring meditation.

stupennebaker's review against another edition

4.0

Four stars only because I felt like it started slowly. This book is one of my favorites I've read in recent memory: if you get excited when you hear the words "free indirect discourse" or if you absolutely love Virginia Woolf this might be for you. It's a story about London with striking vignettes that dip back into history. I both learned a lot a thoroughly enjoyed reading-- one of those stories that I didn't want to end.