A House Unlocked

The house as I knew it exists now only in my mind. The furnishings are precise and clear, the sounds and smells are as they ever were. Thus Penelope Lively recalls Golsoncott, the country house in Somerset bought by her grandparents in 1923. Back then, its day-to-day running 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 major events of the 20th century: the Russian Revolution, the Holocaust and the Blitz all made their mark on the house, if you know where to look. As she remembers the unusual articles there -- the gong stand, the potted-meat jars, the bon-bon dishes -- Lively charts the social changes and shifting attitudes of the last century in this fascinating and unique memoir. Book jacket.