Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #216248 in Books
• Published on: 1988-08-04
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Synopsis
Claudia Hampton is dying. As memories crowd in, she re-creates the mosiac of her life, her own story enmeshed with those of her brother, her lover and father of her daughter, and the centre of her life, Tom, her one great love both found and lost in the "mad fairyland" of war-torn Egypt.

Customer Reviews

A superb read!
Moon Tiger has been one of my favourite books for twenty years. The quality of the writing and the universal themes of the book (life, death, love and the fact that no two persons see or experience the same events in the same way) has more than stood the test of time. In Claudia Hampton, Penelope Lively has created a heronine as interesting and moving as she is egotistical and irritating. As a historian Claudia realises that history is not linear, and as she reflects on her own life we see it through her eyes and through the eyes of those close to her - brother Gordon, lovers Tom and Jasper, daughter Lisa, and so on. But is their remembrance and history the same as Claudias? Even when it is shared history? It is not. The essential solitariness of the human condition comes strongly to the fore in this account of a many faceted life. Are we ever truly known? Even by those closest to us? And do we have a core that all else revolves around, unbeknowst to the outside world? Perhaps, read, see and experience your own story.

The best book in the history of the world
I read this book for A-Level and the memory has stayed with me forever. I hope when I am 76 I will be like Claudia but without the regrets. An incredibly powerful journey interweaved with so many different lives. I love this book and have yet to find another book with such a clever storyline. Penelope Lively is amazing.

UNFORGETTABLE.
I taught this book for many years, because to me, it was one of the most perfect books which I had ever read.
The fact that the main character, Claudia, is dying is contributed simply because that is the only way that we can see Claudia still at last.

Her life, like the Moon Tiger- a mosquito coil which burns itself down to ashes, burns down till the end of the book, and duing that book, we meet all the characters who have had an effect on Claudia. They are her brother Gordon whom she loves more than anyone except her lover Tom Southern, Gordon's wife, Sylvia (not Sheila, and certainly not a wife to Tom who has no wife), Jasper the father of Claudia's child, Lisa,and Lazlo, a surrogate son.

We examine the mercurial temperament which is Claudia and whether we love her or hate, (and sometimes we do both) we are fascianted by her.

This is a book which stays in your memory for ever.