Author:Margaret Forster
To Penelope Butler the family was all, the sole ambition of her adult life. Three of her four daughters, however, had different ideas. Rosemary rejected it; Jess was destroyed by it; Celia found it eluded her. Only Emily pursued her mother's ideal, with disastrous results.
Penelope begins to record their family story as it unfolds. But when Rosemary discovers these private papers she is enraged by her mother's distortions of the truth and proceeds to tell the story from her perspective. From D-Day on into the turbulent post-war years, a picture emerges not only of a single family in all its complexities, but also of the changing world that shaped their lives.
A brilliant, sometimes terrible novel about the generation war within a family, as witty and cool as it is heart-rending
—— Auberon Waugh , Daily MailPainful...gripping...her "private" story reaches far beyond the merely personal
—— ObserverA great, heaving countryside of a book...consistently funny...fluent and elusive, while retaining just the right hint of poison
—— TelegraphStephenson mixes a library’s worth of ideas with compulsive derring-do … its scope and inventiveness become addictive.
—— Time OutA breathless ride…the writing gives an immersive sense of time and place
—— FaceA brilliant, bulging historical novel ... Thrillingly accomplished ... Magnificent ... one finishes it already eager to begin the sequel
—— GuardianHis style is spare, that's what is so beautiful. His novels are genuine romans philosophies - novels illustrating ideas
—— Piers Paul ReadIn a class by himself...the ultimate chronicler of twentieth-century man’s consciousness and anxiety
—— William Golding
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