Publisher's Synopsis
"I thought that I would see if the private life of a house could be made to bear witness to the public traumas of a century." In this fascinating book Penelope Lively recalls Golsoncott, the country house in Somerset her grandparents bought in 1923. Back then the running of the house required the services of eleven people; by the 1990s this infrastructure was remembered only in the wages book buried in the hall chest and the bell system in the pantry. Golsoncott was touched by the cataclysmic events of the twentieth century: the Russian Revolution, the Holocaust, the Blitz. All left their mark on the house, if you know where to look. A HOUSE UNLOCKED charts the social changes and transforming moments of the last century. Shifting attitudes to class, the tension between town and country, how one learns to see the world, all are examined in this unique memoir. "A rattling good read, as absorbing as any of her novels. Highly recommended for all libraries." Ravi Shenoy, Naperville P.L., IL LIBRARY JOURNAL
