Private Papers

Forster, Margaret

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099455625 ISBN 13: 9780099455622

Publisher: Penguin, 1986

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.

Review:

"A brilliant, sometimes terrible novel about the generation war within a family, as witty and cool as it is heart-rending" (Auberon Waugh Daily Mail)

"Painful...gripping...her "private" story reaches far beyond the merely personal" (Observer)

Book Description:

'This stuff of intimate family life is brilliantly presented, subtly and yet with unnerving directness' Susan Hill