As the story continues to unfold and more is revealed about each of the characters, details are becoming more important in understanding the imperfect and disturbing family. After the anniversary dinner, Alison and Charles are laying in bed when Alison asks why they got married. Charles remarks that she became pregnant, and Alison agrees as she lies there crying. This helps the reader to understand why exactly Charles and Alison are so disconnected and why Alison tries so hard to make her family perfect. Charles and Alison clearly got married for the wrong reason, yet they are still together twenty-five years later. In a later chapter of the book, Katie and Roger get together to talk. Attention is brought to the fact that there are no grandchildren yet. None of the six children have produced any offspring, and this disturbs Katie. Katie is the one child out of all of them who is trying to have a baby, and is not successful. She mentions that it is causing trouble in her marriage, and the fact that she seems to be the one with the problem does not help. Roger notes jokingly that she should have inherited some type of fertility, considering the size of their family. The conversation continues around this topic, and how their mother planned to get pregnant without Charles’s consent. This accusation seems incredulous, but it is as if both Katie and Roger know something about the family that is not yet known to the reader. In the same chapter, the family vacation to Crackington Haven is described. Everything is normal until Ingrid, the au pair, mentions that her male friend, Jan, will be visiting them for a couple of days. Not only is this surprising to Alison, but when Jan arrives, everyone is not quite sure of how to act. Alison is very fidgety, and Katie wonders if she minds Ingrid’s relationship. At the dinner table, Charles is indifferent to Jan and does not have much to say. All of these details about fertility, planned (or unplanned) pregnancies, and absurd behavior around Ingrid’s relationship hints something to the reader that there is an underlying family secret. Not only do all these details alone not make sense and are a bit confusing, but they are slowly tying together to reveal something surprising to the reader.

In the beginning of the novel, the cellar was mentioned briefly and gave the impression that something ominous happened down there. At the dinner table at the anniversary celebration, Paul drunkenly says ,”I think we should play a game after dinner. We should play the cellar game.” There was silence after this mention of the game, and Alison questions what Paul was talking about. The next chapter is all about this “cellar game” and does not seem to move the plot forward. It does, however, give the reader and idea about each of the children’s roles and memories of childhood. In addition, the reader gains an insight regarding the relationship among all of the children and how they interacted. 

At the first mention of this game, it seems as if this is some horrible memory that haunts all the children. However, this chapter describes it as a place of imagination and creativity where the cellar could be made into anything they wanted, or more importantly, what Paul wanted. He is the oldest, so he gets to make all of the rules. If one of the children do not comply to his rules, they must “forfeit”  which results in being forced to do something entertaining to the others.This could mean being forced to eat a spider, like Sandra had to one time, or walking around the house in underwear and getting in trouble with Alison or Charles. If someone refused to accept a forfeit, he/she must take a penalty which is “chalked up on the board, to be there for perpetuity.” As kids, the appeal of this game was the sense of privacy and secrecy and a place that belonged solely to the six of them. 

It is significant that there is an entire chapter in this book that is devoted to just describing the cellar game. The six children despise it now, but it had significance. They could be whoever they wanted and lived whatever life they pleased in the cellar without their overpowering mother. It was maybe even painful for them to grow out of that childhood stage of pretending because they were always forced to live with reality and with no escape.  It could also be a painful memory because it was a time when they were once dominated by Paul, who now has grown to be their mother’s favorite despite his troubled life.

Another event that is talked about in the present is the anniversary celebration of Alison and Charles. It is their twenty-fifth anniversary, and none of the children are excited about returning to Allersmead.  It is as if Allersmead brings back painful memories for each of them and returning home will cause these memories to resurface. At this point, all six children have separated themselves from each other and have created their individual lives except Paul. They have not kept in touch, and as Sandra enters the home, she remembers how she “often forgets about Roger. And Katie too. They were always on the fringes of her vision, back then, of little interest unless you needed them to make up the numbers in some game.” This shows how distant each of the siblings are and disconnected the family is from each other. Not only at this point in there lives, but as children too. As much as Alison tried to make her family perfect and flawless, there was nothing perfect about that family. 

Even as Alison continues to try and perfect her family by having everyone come home to celebrate her and Charles’ twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, there is still and underlying discomfort amongst everyone. As everyone attempts to make conversation, yet no one has anything in common to talk about. As they are preparing to eat dinner, Alison is in tears about Paul’s absence. When Paul finally arrives, it is revealed to the reader that Paul has an issue because he shows up “either drunk or stoned, or both.” As he sits down at the dinner table, he asked Alison which of the children is her favorite, and she simply laughs and changes the topic. It is clear that all of the other children think Paul is the favorite child. With his drug and alcohol addiction, he is still living at home. Alison is always concerned about him and defends his actions. This is an unexpected turn of the plot for the reader because it seems that when all of the other children left Allersmead, they began their own lives and created their own success. The reader now sees Paul as this black sheep in the family who causes trouble for everyone. This unexpected information changes the perception of the reader and dynamic of the story as the novel continues because each person is now developing their own identity and profile that slowly ties everything together. 

Penelope Lively’s novel, Family Album, can be seen as a novel that portrays the “perfect” family. “Allersmead” is the name of the huge family home, housing all six children of Alison and Charles Harper and the au pair, Ingrid. In the opening chapters of this novel, the reader perceives the Harpers as a picture-perfect and typical family. Alison is the home-loving and overpowering mother who will do anything it takes to have the perfect family, at least on the surface. As the book continues, however, it is revealed that Charles is actually a preoccupied father who is only concerned about his writing, leaving Alison in charge of the household and all six children. It is not a happy family, as the book reveals, and there are darker and deeper mysteries and flaws within the family than it appears. The book changes between the present time, where all children are grown adults and have individual, separate, and isolating lives from the rest of the family, and past events, which reveals how much Alison tried to make her family perfect, despite underlying and anything-but-perfect truths. As the chapters alternate between the past and present, the past events act as a “snapshot” or insight into how much Alison strived for domestic perfection. The syntax of the sentences and the shortness and abruptness of them also act as snapshots in the story because of their clarity and neatness, which is how the family is perceived.

The first chapter that takes the reader into the past is one that describes Gina’s eighth birthday party. Every detail of the party is planned by Alison, but “usually, when it is a someone’s birthday Dad stays in his study with the door shut.” This is the first indication to the reader that Charles is not a big part of the family, and it is not as close-knit as Alison makes it out to be. At Gina’s birthday party, Gina falls and gets a head injury as she searches for a gold coin for the treasure hunt. The party is over, and Alison is devastated that everything did not go as planned. As Gina is in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, “Alison weeps. This is not happening. Things like this do not happen. Not to this family, not to her.” On the other hand, Charles is angry at Alison because she hid the coin where Gina fell and got injured. This clearly indicates that the relationship between Alison and Charles is incongruous, and the true family identity begins to unravel. 

Currently Reading..mixed feelings so far