The Road To Lichfield

The Booker Prize shortlisted first novel by Penelope Lively, available for the first time as a Penguin EssentialAnn Linton leaves her family in Berkshire and sets up camp in her father's house when he is taken into a nursing home in distant Lichfield. As she shares his last weeks she meets David Fielding, and the love they share brings her feelings into sharp focus. Deeply felt, beautifully controlled, The Road to Lichfield is a subtle exploration of memory and identity, of chance and consequence, of the intricate weave of generations across a past never fully known, and a future never fully anticipated.

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, which was shortlisted for the 1989 Sunday Express Book of the Year Award; 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 has also written radio and television scripts and has acted as presenter for a BBC Radio 4 programme on children's literature. 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.

'The tide's against us, hadn't you noticed? People haven't got that much time for the past nowadays' Anne Linton is living a split life. Her father has suffered a stroke and most weekends she abandons her family and takes the road to Lichfield to be with him before he dies. But the longer she spends there, the more she is drawn into another life. Over a lingering summer she embarks on an affair, tries to save an old cottage from developers and discovers that her own father was not entirely the man she has always imagined him to be. As she begins to see the influence of the past everywhere she turns, Anne's present becomes more and more uncertain . . . 'Unfailingly literate, thoughtful and touching' Washington Post

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