The Road to Lichfield, like most of Lively's novels, belongs to the general tradition of social realism. Lively narrates from a shifting third-person-limited point of view, rendering events mostly from Anne's perspective but also occasionally from the perspectives of Graham, Mr. Stanway, David, and Don. Although the characters sometimes lose themselves in memory and flashback, the dominant movement of the novel is chronological, following the unfolding of the well-shaped plot.

Lively also uses realism's traditional mixture of exterior and interior, that is, of dialogue and action, on the one hand, and of exposure to characters' thought processes, on the other. Although the novel is intricately crafted and patterned (there are parallels, for example, between various characters' lives, such as Anne's and her father's, as well as between the complexity of the historical past and that of Anne's personal past, and the journey to Lichfield is both a geographical...