Penelope Lively. Next to Nature, Art (1982)

     Penelope Lively. Next to Nature, Art (1982) A group of “ordinary people” book an art-week at Framleigh Place, a decaying country house in Warwickshire. Its owner, an example of the decaying gentry, and his so-called staff are a bunch of self-centred twits, whom the ordinary twits at first regard with the awe due self-professed artists. A number of more or less strange things happen, and each of the ordinary folk achieves a kind of epiphany, while the artists remain stuck in their unskilled ruts (and rutting), with the exception of Bob the potter, an excellent craftsman and the only one with a real sense of what making things entails. A pleasant enough romp, with some mild but accurate satire of the silly sixties’ trust in doing your own thing, this book is worth reading – once. ** (2004)