The Purple Swamp Hen and Other Stories

from triscuit

Wonderful, cohesive collection of short stories with engaging characters and intelligent wit. Have loved her writing for years and she continues to dazzle in her eighties.

from larryking1

Penelope Lively is a new writer to me and that is a surprise as the list of her works is quite long. Also, and this attracted me, she is a Booker Prize winner. This collection of short stories is wide ranging and quite varied. There are even a few 'horror' entries, but mostly the events described...

from mykl-s

Extremely well crafted. I wonder why I bother reading novels when there are authors like Penelope Lively who can put so much into ten or twenty pages, telling all I need to know and everything that happened.

from rmckeown

Penelope Lively is an author with a subtle and delightful sense of humor and pathos. She has written more than 20 novels and short story collections. Her latest collection, The Purple Swamp Hen and Other Stories is every bit engrossing as many of the others I have read. Penelope was born in Cairo...

from JulieStielstra

I have loved much of Lively's work, so was delighted to lay hands on this new collection of short stories. She is of a certain generation of British women writers who produce precisely detailed, coolly observed, underwrought portraits largely of women and their complicated and often unsatisfied l...