Veteran novelist Margaret Forster's latest work is presented as the
diary of a real woman, Millicent King, whose life spanned the
century from 1901 to 2000. An introductory chapter describes
Forster supposedly being contacted by Millicent's niece and then
going to meet the old woman herself, being astonished by the scope
and character of the diaries and deciding to edit them for
publication. It's a postmodern twist to what at first seems to be a
straightforward fictional diary. Millicent's story begins when she
is 13, at the start of the First World War, with a lively evocation
of the fears and hardships of the time. Millicent is a girl of
strong character - it's not easy being a vegetarian and pacifist in
1914 - and Forster perfectly captures the passion and resentment of
adolescence. From there we follow Millicent over the years as she
goes to teacher training college, is cast into poverty by her
father's death, spends some months in Italy as a governess and
becomes involved in various faltering relationships before finally
finding a man who she thinks she can spend her life with. In her
character as editor, Forster explains how she has abridged the
diaries, summarising events where necessary and adding the results
of her background research. Like all real diarists but very few
fictional ones, Millicent does not include everything that happens
to her - she often takes important things for granted, changes
topic suddenly and omits really painful events altogether. In her
bridging passages, Forster explains how she has reconstructed what
happened, but there are some things we never know, and many of
Millicent's feelings can only be guessed at. She's still a
beautifully drawn character, and it's clear that one of Forster's
main aims is to show how people change over the course of a
lifetime while retaining some inner core of identity. Millicent is
often impressively brave and forthright, but we still see how many
limitations - some recognized by her and some not - hem her in and
prevent her from realizing many of her dreams. As she suffers and
grows older she shuts off more and more parts of herself,
retreating into timidity and loneliness with sad inevitability.
This is a remarkable novel. Forster not only evokes a woman and a
century with faultless clarity, she also - a much rarer achievement
- makes us question how we know the past, each other and ourselves,
and how our lives develop, trammelled by circumstance and our own
failings and weaknesses but always capable of the odd, astonishing
moment of joy. (Kirkus UK)
Margaret Forster presents the 'edited' diary of a woman, born in
1901, whose life spans the twentieth century. On the eve of the
Great War, Millicent King begins to keep her journal and vividly
records the dramas of everyday life in a family touched by war,
tragedy, and money troubles. From bohemian London to Rome in the
1920s her story moves on to social work and the build-up to another
war, in which she drives ambulances through the bombed streets of
London. Here is twentieth-century woman in close-up coping with the
tragedies and upheavals of women's lives from WWI to Greenham
Common and beyond. A triumph of resolution and evocation, this is a
beautifully observed story of an ordinary woman's life - a
narrative where every word rings true.
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