Author:Margaret Forster

London 1844, and a shy young woman has arrived to take up a new position in the grandeur of No. 50, Wimpole Street. Subtly and compellingly, Lady's Maid gives voice to Elizabeth Wilson's untold story, her complex relationship with her mistress, Elizabeth Barrett, and her dramatic role in the most famous elopement in history.
From the viewpoint of Elizabeth Wilson... lady's maid, Margaret Forster retells the love story of Robert and Elizabeth Browning...Enthralling
—— Daily TelegraphCompulsively readable... at each climax of the story, from the Browning's runaway romance to her own equally compromised and complicated marriage, the lady's maid speaks directly and at the last most movingly
—— GuardianPassion, melodrama, pathos - and a happy ending. What more can you ask for?
—— Daily MailMovingly told... Wilson's pleasures, losses and disappointments in love are complicated and excellently understated, imagined as a contrast to the grand passions she has to serve
—— Times Literary SupplementAccomplished, beautifully written... packed with discreet domestic detail
—— Financial TimesFact and fiction are skilfully interwoven-beautifully done
—— Evening StandardAbsolute genius
—— Linda Grant , BBC Radio 4A brave and unusual variation on a familiar theme... She modulates so finely between comedy and pathos, between psychology and physicality, that she conveys a sense of the richness of lived experience... Anne Enright has taken a great risk in writing this book, but she has brought it off superbly
—— Edmund Gordon , Daily TelegraphDevastatingly good
—— Marie ClaireForces us to look in the mirror... It is a discomfiting public examination of conscience, an exposé of our national shortcomings so recently in the limelight
—— Irish IndependentThat's the Anne Enright voice all right - wry, disabused, reckless, candid, funny
—— Hermione Lee , Guardian[Enright's] amazing ability to engage in lyric flights while keeping her feet on the ground, her way of returing to certain intimate details and of making jumpy little jokes, her habit of using colloquial phrasing to moor Grand Statements, and her rushing, exquisitely turned perceptions
—— Leo Robson , New StatesmanWhere the novel compels is in the attendant disquisitions on memory and its rearrangements, both willed and unwilled; the blurring of boundaries, physical and temporal; the vivid presentation of all characters, major and minor...funny and forgiving
—— Elspeth Barker , Literary ReviewThe book...succeeds admirably, because Enright's characters are indeed so ordinary and fallible; they could quite easily be us
—— Ross Gilfillan , Daily MailThis beautifully written, lyrical novel is a portrait of family tensions and the listless half-light in which a mistress must live
—— Jane Clinton , Sunday ExpressEnright's prose has a brilliant physicality... Her observations of the Irish boom years are caustic and credible
—— Tom Gatti , The TimesEnright has taken a simple plot and produced a touching novel that examines the cost - and the compensations - of love. The heroine is both plausible and sympathetic, while the supporting cast is marshalled with skill, tenderness and humour
—— Max Davidson , Mail on SundayA simply and beautifully told tale
—— LadyA simple tale of adultery and its consequences, told from a female perspective…Enright risks an over-familiarity of the subject matter, but she has brought it off superbly
—— Daily TelegraphEnright is brilliant on the emotional battlefields and dance floors that exist between men and women… Smartingly funny and profoundly wise
—— MetroThe Forgotten Waltz delicately weaves the personal and political into a wry, tender exploration of family, marriage and the price of passion
—— Sorcha Hamilton , Irish TimesBrave, beautiful and quite brilliant
—— Joseph O’Connor , Irish IndependentA brilliant evocation of an ill-fated extramarital; affair, told with Enright’s customary sharp wit and knack for spotting a love-related cliché
—— Guardian, Holiday Reads:The latest novel from the Booker Prize winning author has an emotional heft that belies the novel’s slender size
—— Sunday Business Post Irelanda very human tale about passion, secrets and lies.
—— Reading MattersAn achingly brilliant piece of writing on passion and delusion. It's a pleasure to read from start to finish and reignites our love for fiction
—— Independent






