Penelope Lively has chosen to write about the painful problems facing a woman after the sudden death of her husband…. The book's title, Perfect Happiness, refers to the past. Frances has to adjust to the loss of that happiness and the near-certainty that, at her age, 49, she will find no equivalent.

Perfect Happiness is not depressing. Nor is it sentimental. Frances fights back in two ways. She learns how to summon up, deliberately, past moments of happiness, instead of letting them come at her and knock her off balance. Also, she begins to admit into her life people and possessions her husband had never known….

Penelope Lively has created characters in whose reality we believe and about whose fortunes we care. In very tricky terrain for a novelist she never puts a foot wrong. She knows that those who feel grief do not feel it all the time...