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• More titles by Margaret Forster

Synopsis

Margaret Forster's grandmother died in 1936, taking many secrets to her grave. Where had she spent the first 23 years of her life? Who was the woman in black who paid her a mysterious visit shortly before her death? How had she borne living so close to an illegitimate daughter without acknowledging her?

The search for answers took Margaret on a journey into her family’s past, examining not only her grandmother's life, but also her mother’s and her own. The result is both a moving, evocative memoir and a fascinating commentary on how women’s lives have changed over the past century.

Reviews

Critic Review:

'

Moving and beautifully written, it had me sitting up all night'
Mary Wesley in the Daily Mail

'This is a wonderful book, perhaps the best Margaret Forster has yet given us, crowning her thirty years achievement as a novelist and biographer ... her narrative has the bite and vigour of truth well told ... a slice of history to be recalled whenever people lament the lovely world we have lost'
Claire Tomalin, The Independent

'A moving, evocative account, passionate in its belief in progress, punchy as a detective novel in its story of Forster's search for her grandmother's illegitimate daughter. It also shows how biography can challenge our basic assumptions about which lives have been significant and why'
The Sunday Times

'As I read this painfully honest book, I kept finding myself saying, "yes, yes, yes" For what she does - with all the astringency and yet humane empathy she achieves in her novels - is tackle the basic dilemmas we have found ourselves in since the modern feminist revolution began in the Sixties'
The Sunday Telegraph

'Above all, Forster writes of the rituals of domesticity with intense sensual pleasure ... she has, movingly and lovingly, given shape and meaning to the unsung lives of two past generations in a masterpiece of honesty and elegance'
Valerie Grove in The Times

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