Diary of an Ordinary Woman

Reviews / Votes

A highly enjoyable read: well-informed, gripping...an overview of the period seen from the underside * Sunday Telegraph * Not only is the background of social and political change meticulously accurate...but there is everything one would expect from a well-kept diary. This is fiction: yet it is true * Guardian * A beautifully crafted novel about the cost of war... Forster is as distinguished a biographer and memoir-writer as she is a novelist. She is an old hand at making a story out of the fragments of a life * Daily Telegraph * We believe in Millicent whole-heartedly and come to love her - she has a heroism that George Eliot would recognise. It may be fiction, but it's also - convincingly, tragically and often exhilaratingly - real life * Independent on Sunday * A richly textured, skilfully structured and highly enjoyable novel by an experienced writer at the peak of her powers * Times Literary Supplement * No woman could have been more liberated than Millicent King, whose story Margaret Forster tells in this excellent novel - less a novel than a chronicle of events experienced by a token ordinary woman, who is in fact not so much ordinary as iconic -- Anita Brookner * Spectator * A new work by Margaret Forster always gives me a tingle of anticipation. Her books are consistently good reads, packed with originality and imagination -- Val Hennessy * Daily Mail * Always convincing and utterly compulsive * Eve * This is a remarkable novel. Forster evokes a woman and a century with faultless clarity. She also makes us question how we know the past, each other and ourselves * Good Book Guide * Diary of an Ordinary Woman is certainly more gripping and more immediate than many novels...Forster has pulled off an imaginative feat * Literary Review *