.PAPERBACK EDITION.CREASES TO SPINE AND COVER.TEAR ON FRONT COVER R/H SIDE
"The Moon Tiger is a green coil that slowly burns all night, repelling mosquitoes, dropping away into lengths of grey ash, its glowing red eye a companion of the hot insect-rasping darkness."
I include this quote in case you were wondering about the title, and also because it suggests some of the appeal of Penelope Lively's Booker winner. Atmospheric enough in its own right, the image takes on more power when you know that this Moon Tiger comes into focus because it lies beside two lovers ? Claudia and Tom ? on one of their last snatched nights together in Cairo during the second world war. Tom is about to return to the frontline ? and death ? and the two have barely even had time to get to know each other. The coil burns away as Claudia tries to cement Tom in her mind and gets him to tell her his life story. Eventually, he comes to her. "I like this part of the story best," she says, and Lively writes: "And oh God, thinks Claudia, may it have a happy ending. Please may it have a happy ending. The Moon Tiger is almost entirely burned away now; its green spiral is mirrored by an ash spiral in the saucer." What she doesn't write, but what we see, is the march of time, relentlessly trampling every moment into the past; the ash-spiral fragility of memory; the transience of passion; the fact that even when we burn brightest we are already dying ?