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About Margaret Forster

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Synopsis

A mother leaves her baby daughter a mysterious, sealed box before she dies. Years later, when Catherine opens her mother's box - the 'Memory Box' - she finds it full of strange, unexplained objects, carefully wrapped and numbered, like clues to a puzzle. Catherine never knew her mother, but her idealized image, as the 'perfect', beautiful and talented woman that the rest of her family remembers, has cast a long shadow over her life. As she tries to solve the mystery of the box of secrets, she is pulled into the past and to her mother's story, which reveals a woman far more complex, surprising and dangerous than the family legend has allowed. And in turn Catherine, fiercely independent and self-absorbed, discovers unexpected truths about herself.

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Critic Review:

'Margaret Forster's enthralling new novel... Catherine's unravelling of the clues is gripping and persuasive, and Forster brilliantly tracks her reluctant progress'
Literary Review

'The novel becomes compulsive reading as we, along with Catherine, delve into the past."
 Mail on Sunday

A powerful emotional realism which leaves its mark on the reader's mind as strongly as any dramatic incident'
Independent on Sunday

'Deft, unusual and very readable ... Margaret Forster has again written a vivid and compulsive novel' The Financial
Times

'Like memory itself, it is subtle, full of secrets, and it lingers'
Independent

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