I think ‘A Stitch in Time’ is a more sophisticated book, but ‘The Ghost of Thomas Kempe’ was very enjoyable. The ending of the story was very beautiful. James becomes friends with an older person called Bert, who is a decorator and a builder, and Bert is a cool person too and was one of my favourite characters from the book. He is cool and inquisitive and adventurous and made me remember one of my favourite characters Nicholas from the story ‘ The Lumber Room‘ by Saki. The ghost in the novel is a cool, unusual character. Penelope explores some of these themes related to memory and time and the surreal elements in more detail and in more sophistication in her later acclaimed novel ‘ A Stitch in Time‘. But it is also a story about memory and imagination and time with some surreal elements. ‘ The Ghost of Thomas Kempe‘ is a ghost story. The strange secrets which stumble out after that and how James handles the situation is told in the rest of the story. His family suspects that James is responsible for all this. When he doesn’t do the requested things, strange things happen inside his room and even a gale blows. Notes start appearing in his room in a strange cursive handwriting in archaic spelling asking James to do one thing or another. Then one day strange things start happening in his room and in the house. James moves with his parents and his sister to a new house. It gives me goosebumps when I think about that. I think she is the only writer ever to win these two prizes.

She won the Carnegie Medal for this book and the Booker Prize for ‘ Moon Tiger‘. Other writers stay on one side of the divide and occasionally experiment on the other side, but Penelope Lively’s backlist on both sides is huge and very impressive. Penelope Lively wrote stories both for children and for grown-ups throughout most of her writing career. I want to say something about the author Penelope Lively here. I read up a little bit about her and that is how I discovered ‘ The Ghost of Thomas Kempe‘. I read Penelope Lively’s ‘ A Stitch in Time‘ a few years back and loved it.

A stitch in time book penelope lively