Summary and Reviews of Life by Mal Peet

1.
Norfolk, early March, 1945

Ruth AckRoyd was in the garden checking the rhubarb when the RAF Spitfire accidentally shot her chimney-pot to bits. The shock of it brought the baby on three weeks early.

"I was expectun," she'd often say, over the years. "But I wunt expectun that."


She'd had cravings throughout her pregnancy, ambitious ones: tinned ham, chocolate, potted shrimps, her husband's touch, rhubarb. Rhubarb was possible though. Ruth and her mother, Win, grew it in the cottage garden. They forced it; which is to say they covered the plants with upended buckets so that when new tendrils poked through the soil, they found themselves in the dark and grew like mad, groping for light. Stalks of forced rhubarb were soft, blushed and stringless. You could eat them without sugar, which was rationed, and Ruth wanted to. So she'd waddled out into the garden on a rare day of early-spring sunshine to lift the buckets and see how things were doing. See if there ...

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

1. While Clem is the main character in the book, with the majority of the novel related from his point of view, large sections of the story are also given over to histories of his father, George, his mother Ruth, and his grandmother Winn. Why do you think Peet has chosen to include their stories? How important is family history in shaping a character's identity? In what ways has Clem been shaped by the experiences of his family?
2. "It's not easy keeping history in line. Herding cats by fog is easy by comparison." Peet uses a non-chronological narrative structure, which shifts back and forth between the past and present. Why do you think Peet has chosen to use this structure? Think particularly about its role in creating suspense ...