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Автор Пенелопа Лайвли

PENELOPE LIVELY Spiderweb

PENGUIN BOOKS

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

PENGUIN BOOKS

SPIDERWEB

‘A wonderfully astute and quietly clever novel’ Kate Campbell, Evening Standard

‘I greatly enjoyed Penelope Lively’s Spiderweb. She is one of those few compulsory authors whose books I find I must read’ Jill Paton Walsh, Independent on Sunday, Books of the Year

‘Her literary ancestors are novelists like Elizabeth Taylor and Barbara Pym, whose ostensible subjects – domesticity, the rural community, virtue and patience – give way to visions of savage exoticism, sex and freedom’ Philip Hensher, Mail on Sunday

‘Seethes with contentious ideas’ Gillian Fairchild, Daily Telegraph

‘As in her earlier novel, Heat Wave, Penelope Lively shows herself an astute and unsentimental portraitist of rural England, that highly-subsidized wasteland of suicidal angst and hazardous chemicals’ Hilary Mantel, Independent

‘Penelope Lively on good form: a typical story of quiet, respectable people and their turbulent inner lives, delivered in quiet, respectable, yet occasionally devastating prose’ Gill Hornby, Literary Review

‘Terrific’ Leslie Geddes-Brown, Country Life

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Penelope Lively grew up in Egypt but settled in England after the war and took a degree in history at St Anne’s College, Oxford. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and a member of PEN and the Society of Authors. She was married to the late Professor Jack Lively, has a daughter, a son and four grandchildren, and lives in London.

Penelope Lively is the author of many prize-winning novels and short-story collections for both adults and children. She has twice been shortlisted for the Booker Prize; once in 1977 for her first novel, The Road to Lichfield, and again in 1984 for According to Mark. She later won the 1987 Booker Prize for her highly acclaimed novel Moon Tiger.

Her other books include Going Back; Perfect Happiness; Passing On, which was shortlisted for the 1989 Sunday Express Book of the Year Award; Cleopatra’s Sister, Beyond the Blue Mountains, a collection of short stories; Oleander, Jacaranda, a memoir of her childhood days in Egypt; Spiderweb; A House Unlocked, a second autobiographical work; and The Photograph.

Penelope Lively has also written radio and television scripts and has acted as presenter for a BBC Radio 4 programme on children’s literature. She is a popular writer for children and has won both the Carnegie Medal and the Whitbread Award. She was appointed CBE in the 2001 New Year’s Honours list.

TITLES BY PENELOPE LIVELY IN PENGUIN

FICTION

Going Back

The Road to Lichfield

Treasures of Time

Judgement Day

Next to Nature, Art

Perfect Happiness

Corruption and Other Stories

According to Mark

Pack of Cards: Stories 1978-1986

Moon Tiger

Passing On

City of the Mind

Cleopatra’s Sister

Heat Wave