Penelope Lively: Going Back

Going Back, by Penelope Lively, reconstructs the story of two children growing up on a farm, called Medleycott, in Somerset during World War II. Jane, one of the children who is now married and has children on her own, tells the story of her childhood to her husband, who drives with her to Medleycott, because the house she was born in is going to be sold.

Jane and her brother Edward are inseparable. They do everything together and love living at Medleycott, which they call a paradise. Their mother died very early and now there is Betty looking after them. When the war starts, their father leaves to Scotland but Jane and Edward do not really mind because they do not like him. Jane even hates him, because he is always very strict with Edward, who is not able to do anything right in his father’s opinion. One day Mike comes to Medleycott. As a conscientious objector and as a Quaker most people do not like him and he has to leave Medleycott when the father, who comes home on an unannounced leave, finds out that he lives there. But Mike has a special relationship to Edward since he teaches him to play the violin. Both children have trust in him and that is why they decide to go to Chedzoy, where Mike lives in his own barn. They run away from Medleycott, because Edward does not want to go back to boarding school where his father sent him after half term. Betty comes to take the children home. They have another year together at their beloved place before Edward has to go back to boarding school.

It is a story about remembering, about going back to the places of childhood and about changes that take place when somebody is growing up. And it is about the meaning of friendship between brother and sister, which lives on in the mind, even if one of them dies, who, in this case, is Edward who dies in the Korean War as a soldier.