Careful, cultivated and quietly ruthless

The photograph by Penelope Lively(secker, (pounds) 14.99)

PENELOPE Lively specialises in the kind of novels the establishment adores - beautifully written, carefully painted personal landscapes that investigate the lives of the English middle classes. They are novels that attract prizes by the barrel-load and garner the kind of critical acclaim that often contains words like "mature" and "subtle". This is a quality writer, these adjectives imply. No shocking prose here; no unsettling urban exteriors.

It all serves to make Lively's work sound thoroughly conservative - not cool, not sexy, just a bit of inner personal mess behind the carefully cultivated middle-class fronts. But this is a perception that is quite, quite wrong. Lively is a deeply shocking writer - I defy anyone to read this latest novel and not gasp at least once at the sheer relentlessness with which she probes lives and drags out unwilling personal histories.

It is not Lively's delicate prose that makes her the great writer she is. In fact, it can count against her - does anybody apart from the queen really use the pronoun 'one' any more? Rather, it is the quality of utter ruthlessness she possesses - a ruthlessness that sears every character she portrays.

When historian Glyn Peters starts to clear out the belongings of his dead wife, Kath, he comes across an envelope with the words "Don't open - destroy" on it. It turns out to contain a photograph taken 15 years earlier, along with a lovingly written note. The photograph shows a party of people at an archaeological site, and in the foreground are a couple with their backs to the camera. They do not realise they are being photographed, and have surreptitiously joined hands behind their backs so that the rest of the party cannot see them.

Glyn identifies the couple immediately - it is Kath and her sister's husband, Nick. Ever the historian, he channels his rage at the discovery of this infidelity into a search for other pieces of evidence that will help him construct the hidden history of his wife's life. Did she have other lovers? Did her sister, Elaine, know about this affair? Who else might have known? Was their life together just a sham?

This often humiliating search - Glyn disguises his intent from Kath's acquaintances, pretending that he is writing a memoir - quickly becomes a pathological need to fill in the gaps. The photograph itself might be an artefact, a piece of historical narrative, but Glyn's memory holds no such solid pieces of evidence. He was absent on the day that the photograph was taken, and that haunts him - where was he, what was he doing?

This clash between history and memory permeates the novel. As Glyn tracks down more old friends and acquaintances, a refrain of Ruth's repeats in his head: "You're not listening, are you?" In death, Glyn is paying attention to his wife as he never did when she was alive. Similarly Elaine, who never paid the younger Kath much attention, finds herself obsessed with her once Glyn reveals his discovery. Her outer response is immediate and practical - she confronts Nick, throws him out of the house and gets on with her life. But her inner response is more complex, and she is forced to examine the way she treated her younger sister.

That Kath herself is an absence in the novel, a gap to be filled in by other people's opinions, does not lessen her impact as a character. Adored by her niece Polly and remembered affectionately by friends and even those who never knew her, Kath is like a relic that has been discovered, dusted down and examined for signs of its original life.

The disruption that the discovery of a single photograph causes is conveyed by Lively with a certain quiet detachment. It is this detachment and quietness that has seen her marked as a conservative writer - but in this case these qualities have produced intensely moving and shocking work. Sometimes, Lively shows us, the greatest surprises in life are discharged with the smallest of sounds.

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