Oleander, Jacaranda: A Childhood Perceived

From Publishers Weekly

Lively, the Booker prize-winning British author of Moon Tiger, here recalls her childhood in Egypt from the mid-1930s until her parents divorced in 1945 when she was 12. This intriguing memoir of growing up in another culture relies on Lively's perception of experience rather than on a detailed chronology of events. Her father, whom she rarely saw, was a manager at the Bank of Egypt; her mother was taken up in the expatriate social whirl. Lively's upbringing was left to Lucy, a young English woman, who was first her nurse and then her governess. The author's impressionistic portraits of Egypt, Alexandria and Palestine evoke sights and smells that are, in many respects, no longer accessible. Already suffering emotionally from parental neglect, Lively was further traumatized when her return to England caused her to be separated from Lucy. A sad and engaging reminiscence. Illustrations not seen by PW. Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Oleander, jacaranda... jacaranda, oleander... they are the same trees but in reverse order, depending on whether you see them on the journey going or returning. In many ways, this childhood memoir, by the winner of the Booker Prize for her novel Moon Tiger ( LJ 3/15/88), is just such a journey. It is an adult reminiscence, based on "a headful of brilliant frozen moments" from the author's 12-year sojourn as a British child in Egypt, Palestine, and Sudan in the 1930s and 1940s. It is also a journey of discovery into the nature of childhood perceptions. The wide, brown Nile, the ebony-skinned Nubians, incense-laden Jerusalem, and the stifling heat of Khartoum are experienced as a child would experience them, with Lively's surogate mother, Lucy, providing a chauvinistic filter. In this book Lively has given a heartrending yet historically fascinating account of a little girl who hardly knew her parents; it is a first-rate demonstration of how a child sees. - Marie L. Lally, Alabama Sch. of Mathematics & Science, Mobile Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.