A Man Booker Prize–shortlisted first novel and a “searing study of the peculiar state of being in love” (The Sunday Telegraph).
In The Road to Lichfield, Penelope Lively explores the nature of history and memory as it is embodied in the life of forty-year-old Anne Linton, who comes to her father’s aid when he is moved into a nursing home in a distant town. As she shares his last weeks, she unexpectedly learns that her father had a mistress. With this new knowledge, Linton must examine the realities of her own life—of her childhood, her marriage—and ask, what secrets has she also kept?
Deeply felt and beautifully controlled, The Road to Lichfield is a subtle exploration of chance and consequence, of the intricate weave of generations across a past never fully known, and a future never fully anticipated.
“Like all of Lively’s best novels, The Road to Lichfield contains beneath its modest veneer great depths of intelligence, perception and feeling.” —The Washington Post Book World
