20/05/16: Penelope Lively – According to Mark (1984)

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1984, According to Mark follows writer Mark Lamming as he tries to research a literary biography. His research into the unsung author Gilbert Strong gets him involved with Strong's granddaughter, who runs a garden centre in Dorset, sparking off a series of events that culminate in a road trip through France.

This is another hugely intelligent, entertaining Penelope Lively novel. It's funny in places and contains gems of social observation. Particularly well drawn characters – such as Mark's controlling and super-controlled wife Diana – make this a real pleasure to read. Lively flits between perspectives, sometimes approaching a scene from an unexpected point of view and sometimes revisiting the same events to give another person's take on them. This is unusual and refreshing: so much fiction takes a more static line on whose perspective a book is from. She makes it work very freely and accessibly.

The book asks some deep questions about identity. It can also be read as a straightforward novel about human relationships. I came to this soon after the more serious Booker-winning Moon Tiger and was not disappointed.