...[an] immensely enjoyable collection ... Lively’s, then, is the voice of experience, and there is a grandmotherly tone to her stories, occasionally expressing impatience with the younger generation and their blank disbelief at the thought of ageing ... Her tone is not elegiac but something far sharper, and she does not twinkle: Lively is not that kind of grandmother. She is funny ... Lively is wary of high emotion, but only because she knows its power. In these perfectly pitched circumnavigations of relationships, passion and sex lie unseen but felt everywhere beneath the surface.
...[a] superb collection ... Her stories embrace 'plotless and pointless' real life, but then construct layers of insight ... tension is central to all of these stories; in various ways, they explore the essential unknowability of everyone around us. Lively appears to subscribe to Henry James’s memorable assessment: 'Never say you know the last word about any human heart.' The same might well be said of Lively herself.
...[a] sharp-eyed and cherishable new collection ... When she writes about the phases of women’s lives, with all the expectations and limitations they strain against from childhood to old age, she knows whereof she speaks.
Penelope Lively has a wry ability to skewer – and the generosity to pull back before things get vicious ... offer[s] an unusual combination of a generous heart and an unflinching gaze, a mix of perspicacity and grace both uncommon and needed.
...to summarize these stories is to miss the point. Within this narrow framework, Lively is remarkably digressive. Her characters are talkers—many of the stories here are narrated through stream-of-consciousness or dialogue—and she achieves a level of detail not strictly necessary for the mechanics of the piece ... This collection's title is The Purple Swamp Hen and Other Stories, but that 'and' might be more transparently followed by 'other sketches.' 'The Weekend' is about a weekend; 'The Row' is about an argument; 'Mrs. Bennett' is about a Mrs. Bennett, poor thing. At Lively's best, this is richly done. But too often her plots rest on inversions of a type that feels predictable and self-satisfied.
A droll update of Pride and Prejudice and a couple of satisfyingly scary ghost stories provide some lighter entertainment, and even in her darkest tales, Lively’s fundamentally serious take on our tangled emotional lives is never bleak, merely ruefully accepting. A treasure trove of fictional gems.
The same measured intelligence and subtle humor that characterizes Lively’s novels is present in this story collection. The stories often bear rereading, as Lively’s quiet elegance rolls by so smoothly ... An effortless and masterly collection.
