Book 2 - Family Album

So last night I finished book 2 of 2011 - Family Album by Penelope Lively - another of my christmas book token purchases.

Again she appears to be a prolific author but I've never read any of her books before. It's about a family and their memories of events from the past. There are six children, their parents and an Au Pair who has stayed for 30 years and we get to see events of the past through the memories of the children and occasionally the adults.

The house that the family live in is actually the centre piece of the story and we are drawn to see the house as the central character of the novel rather than any of the humans.

I did enjoy the book but the 'family secret' mystery wasn't exactly difficult to guess and also at the beginning it is quite difficult to keep track of all the character names. However it was an interesting concept as the author was trying to show how events of the past are coloured by the person that remembers them not by the facts of the event. Some of the characters were really well drawn but I think we missed out because the 'adults' weren't quite so explored as people as the children and I would have liked to have had a bit more of an idea of how they viewed events, especially the father. Having said that I think the father was the most stereotypical character in the story and, as such, the one who would be most difficult to expand.

Definitely one I'd recommend though.