Page Turners – October review

In October the Page Turners read ‘Hidden Lives‘ by Margaret Forster. Margaret Forster wrote over twenty novels and about fourteen biographies and memoirs. This memoir was published in 1995. It tells of the lives of her grandmother – a former servant with a secret illegitimate daughter, her mother and herself. Margaret’s mother and grandmother are portrayed as locked into lives of duty, marrying because to be a wife and mother was the only expectation they and others had of them and putting their family first at the expense of their own satisfaction. Margaret, on the other hand was determined from a young age to live a fulfilling life as a writer and not to be hampered by husband and babies. She was fortunate enough to have been born at a time when women were able to aspire to ‘have it all’ and when she chose to have the husband and babies, it did not prevent her from also having a very successful career. The book examines the choices available to the three generations of women and celebrates the changes.

Of course, many in our group are women and we all have mothers and grandmothers whose lives overlap the timeframe of this book so we were all able to relate to the themes in so many ways and compare the events of the book with those in our own families. For this reason we all enjoyed the book, although some of us wondered how the author’s mother and grandmother would have felt about their secrets being shared so openly.

We found the book easy to read and engaging. The descriptive writing enabled us to easily picture the locations and people. During our discussion we focussed on the way in which women’s lives have changed over the past century, considering the events in the book, our own lives and the current generation. I think we concluded that we were born at the best time – we definitely had more choices than our mothers and grandmothers and did not have to contend with the unemployment and financial pressures that affect young people today.

If you are interested in reading this book for yourself, please get in touch and swap our page turner for one of your own. (I am delighted to say that someone actually did this last month and I have an interesting looking book on my reading pile as a result!)

Deborah Wallis, convenor