Making It Up

A highly original work, in Making it Up, Penelope Lively examines alternative destinies, choices and the moments in our lives when we could have chosen a different path.

In this fascinating piece of fiction, Penelope Lively takes moments from her own life and asks ''what if'' she had made other choices: what if she hadn''t escaped from Alexandria at the outbreak of WWII? What would her life have been like if she had become pregnant when she was 18? If she had married someone else? If she taken a different job? If she had lived her life abroad?

''[A] highly original form of fictional autobiography as well as a fascinating insight into the seemingly random nature of destiny'' Daily Mail

''[Lively''s] writing has always tackled deep questions of identity, memory, love and loss . . . These elegant ''confabulations'', as she calls them, allow Lively''s talents full range. Intelligent, limpidly well-written and full of human understanding, they e