At the first session of the 21st-century literature book club, we read Penelope Lively’s childhood memoir Oleander, Jacaranda: A Childhood Perceived, which describes the author’s early childhood in Egypt until she was sent to boarding school in England at the age of 12. Through a series of autobiographical vignettes interspersed with historical detail, the memoir captures British colonial life in the Middle-East through the eyes of a child. It also reflects on the process of recalling childhood experiences, asking how it is possible to recover and represent the past.

We began by reading the short preface, in which Lively suggests that the experience of childhood is irretrievable. Instead, according to Lively, all we have is ‘a headful of brilliant frozen moments’. An animated discussion ensued about the different ways in which children and adults view the world, and many group members highlighted the visceral nature of Lively’s recollections; for example, the feel of the hot, sticky leather car seats evoked in the first chapter. As one participant noted, the memoir comprises ‘snapshots’ of a life, rather than one continual, unfolding narrative.

From there, our discussion broadened out, touching on the legacy of family relationships in our early years and how they influence our adult selves. Many group members were intrigued by Lucy, the nanny with whom Lively had an intense and loving relationship, and wanted to fill in the gaps in her story. There was much discussion of the letters returned to Lively by Lucy, which testify to the distress caused by her painful separation from her guardian and childhood home.

The memoir also provoked reflections on the consequences of being an only child and the effects of displacement and relocation during the post-War era.

Here’s a poem that reflects some of the ideas evoked by Lively’s memoir:

Lois in the Sunny Tree

When in August 1920 I smiled for the camera
from my perch on the limb of a sun-spangled tree,
says Lois, long dead now but humorously seven years old then,
with a giant ribbon in my hair, the sorrow of living in time
was only very tiny and remote in some far corner of my mind

and for me to know then, as I smiled for that camera
in Michigan in the summer of 1920
that you would peer thoughtfully and admiringly
into my happy photographed eyes eighty-some years later
would have been good for me only in a very tiny and remote way.

MARK HALLIDAY