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Can we ever really re-invent ourselves, start again, or will the past catch up with us wherever we hide?

About the Author

Born in Carlisle, Margaret Forster was the author of many successful and acclaimed novels, including Have the Men Had Enough?, Lady's Maid, Diary of an Ordinary Woman, Is There Anything You Want? , Keeping the World Away, Over and The Unknown Bridesmaid. She also wrote bestselling memoirs u Hidden Lives, Precious Lives and, most recently, My Life in Houses u and biographies. She was married to writer and journalist Hunter Davies and lived in London and the Lake District. She died in February 2016, just before her last novel, How to Measure a Cow, was published.

Reviews

The work of a novelist in her prime… The narrative is taut and suspenseful, the characterization complex and dynamic.
*Guardian*

Brilliantly drawn… Atmosphere and characters linger long after the novel ends
*Sunday Times*

Deft, intriguing and gripping. Forster never disappoints.
*Woman & Home*

This is Margaret Forster's last novel, sadly, and it's full of reminders of what made her such a shrewd and arresting chronicler of women’s lives
*Mail on Sunday*

An exemplary final work … wonderfully well-observed
*The Times*

It is Forster’s acute scrutiny of the economy of friendship that hooks.
*Observer*

Her simple, direct prose never strikes a false note
*Independent on Sunday*

Amply displays her formidable talent as a storyteller, undiminished to the end, and her marvellous ability to anatomise the lives of her characters while still enabling them to emerge fully realised in the reader’s imagination… The novel is a rich inquiry into the nature of friendship… Forster is, as ever, brilliant at the telling details that illuminate her characters’ inner lives… A fine last novel by an outstanding writer, it will disappoint neither longstanding admirers nor newcomers to Forster’s work. Above all, it is a novel about the abiding human need to love and to be loved, a need that Forster makes clear is beyond measurement.
*Financial Times*

Forster is very good at the slow reveal, gradually illuminating the more questionable aspects of Tara's character as well as the crime that changed her life. She's also brilliant on the complexities of ordinary people, particularly women: the little ways they deceive themselves, their quickness to judge and their clumsy determination to be kind
*Daily Mail*

Quietly compelling.
*Sunday Times*

Margaret Forster writes the most amazing prose, tight without a superfluous word and still with the ability to convey crystal clear images to the reader… She weaves loyalty, betrayal, friendship, honour and honesty with wonderful characterisation into an absorbing story.
*Nudge*

Characters are cleverly drawn and the north/south divide well depicted
*Daily Express*