Don’t judge a book by its author.</p>
I open each Margaret Forster novel with quiet reverence and scrubbed-clean hands. I make sure the dishes are done and the mobile phone switched off. I will tolerate no distractions. </p>
This novel is about Julia, and the narrative jumps between her childhood, her teenage years and her middle-age. </p>
We are in familiar Forster territory in the working-class North. Life is down-at-heel and there is no luxury, joy or colour in young Julia’s life. She tolerates it well, and is good, meek and quiet - almost irritatingly so. She reminded me of Little Nell: a goody-goody-gum-drops. Indeed, the main spark in these sections comes from her nippy, dissatisfied mother who rattles with frustration at life. </p>
Irritable mother and dutiful daughter go off to Manchester for a family wedding. Here, their straitened circumstances are made painfully clear as Julia’s mother grumbles about the cost, the hassle, the stress, the waste. She takes a nasty pleasure in seeing that the bridesmaid dress doesn’t fit and is grimly satisfied when rain falls on the wedding day. I enjoyed her simmering bitchiness as it sprang from her situation in life: a widow, struggling, living in a backwater, with little company except unnatural little Julia. </p>
However, we see no reason for Julia’s strained niceness. Why is she so meek and timid? Life isn’t cruel to her. Why doesn’t she run about and play and get dirty? 
So, it’s little surprise to see that, when the narrative jumps forward to her adult life, she has become  a solid, humourless child psychologist and magistrate. The main interest in the adult sections comes from Julia’s clients. She has to deal with bullying children, vicious, unco-operative children, children who wander off and throw everyone into panic, children who refuse to leave their beds. As before, the main interest here what is happening around Julia, not Julia herself. It was Julia’s mother, and now Julia’s clients, who provide the drama. She remains the maddeningly calm eye of the storm. </p>
When will she herself erupt, we wonder? And hope. </p>
Finally, Julia’s smooth surface cracks when she enters her teenage years and nindulges in some truly vicious behaviour. But why? She was always so polite and nice and sensible. She was as a child and is as an adult, so why the aberration in her teenage years? This is never explained and the reader is left dissatisfied as to why she went so horribly off the rails. </p>
On the surface, of course, she is upset at her mother dying and doesn’t feel quite at home with her new family, but this simply doesn’t explain the dirty tricks and cruelty she descends into. There is a real disconnect between the three strands of narrative. Child could merge neatly into adult, but how do we account for the sour and icy teenage years?</p>
And no minutiae. That’s what Margaret Forster does so well: the fabric of ordinary lives, the weft and weave. This novel was altogether too smooth. There is never the sensation of prising something open and peering inside. </p>
So when my review copy appeared I abandoned everything else on my reading pile and devoted my attention to it utterly. But I was disappointed for I had judged the book by its author. Had it been written by a lesser mortal I may have enjoyed it more. Perhaps Forster’s track record of sheer brilliance dented it for me, for it is a good read, just not of the usual Forster magnificence.</p>
<i>The Unknown Bridesmaid</i> is published by Chatto & Windus
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