A Very Satisfying Read!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                       So far, it has been a very skewered, or, rather, inconsistent, reading year.  With my venturing into the fantasy realm, earlier, I feel I have been thrown off my literary game, never knowing what to expect, now, when I pick up a new book.

                                         "Family Album," by Penelope Lively, had been highly recommended to me, and all was justified.  In less than 300 pages, Lively manages to encompass the scope of a 500 plus page Victorian novel, in chronicling the Harpers, a family of six, headed by a mother, Allison, who had been a failed actress, which I wanted to know more about, and her offspring--Paul, the eldest, and the family's itinerant loser, Gina, the traditionalist, Sandra, the pretty one who goes into fashion, and then there is Claire,, who is not really a Harper, because........

                                            The family gathers at a country estate calls Allersmead, the kind one can picture from having seen Merchant-Ivory movies.  This would have been a perfect vehicle, for them, matter of fact.  Teen-age clandestine sex, fulfillment on the ballet stage...oh, my God, you might think I was talking about "The Thorn Birds," or something, but Lively's style is beautifully understated and can accomplish more in a story than Colleen McCullough did in her florid, but wonderfully wrought, novel.

                                              "Family Album" is a delightful literary divestment, dears!!!!!!!!!!!

                                               Make sure it is read, during High Tea!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!