As the days pass, she grows in confidence, until even her parents are forced to re-evaluate her as a person in her own right. When she sees the sampler embroidered by a Victorian girl named Harriet whose home it was, she begins to wonder, and worry, about what happened to that long gone girl.until on an expedition to the cliffs past and present collide, to give Maria a glimpse of a day long ago, when tragedy struck.or maybe not.Īnd in the meantime, Maria grows fascinated with fossils, and makes her first real friend-the boy staying in the house next door, who becomes her companion in exploration. She begins to hear things that aren't there-the creak of a swing, the barking of a dog. The house where Maria is staying is a Victorian period piece, and the past seems particularly close to the present. But still, Maria is used to being alone with her thoughts. They aren't bad parents-after all, they are taking her on a seaside vacation away from London to a rent house in Dorset, near the famous fossil cliffs of Lyme Regis (where Mary Anning made her discoveries).
Maria is the dreamy only child of distant parents who make little effort to truly engage with her. This, to my mind, is a shame, because her children's books are awfully good! Not least among them is today's Timeslip Tuesday book, A Stitch in Time (1976).
She continued to write for children up to the end of the 20th century, before turning entirely to adult books in the 21st. Penelope Lively began her career as a writer for children, with the publication of Astercote ( my review) in 1970.
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