Dancing Fish and Ammonites: A Memoir

"Sharp, unsentimental and ruefully funny. A fascinating portrait not only of Lively but of the times through which she has lived" -- Daily Telegraph (London)

Rare personal reflections from “one of our most talented writers” (The New York Times Book Review), Booker Prize winner Penelope Lively

At age eighty, Penelope Lively wrote this powerful and compelling 'view from old age', reporting back on what she found. There are meditations on what it is like to be old as well as on how memory shapes us. There are intriguing examinations of the key personal as well as historical moments she has lived through and her thoughts on her own bookishness - both as reader and writer. Lastly, she turns to six treasured possessions to speak eloquently about who she is and where she's been - fragments of memories from a life well lived.