 the unknown bridesmaid by margaret forster don t judge a book by its author i open each margaret forster novel with quiet reverence and scrubbedclean hands i make sure the dishes are done and the mobile phone switched off i will tolerate no distractions this novel is about julia and the narrative jumps between her childhood her teenage years and her middleage we are in familiar forster territory in the workingclass north life is downatheel 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 goodygoodygumdrops indeed the main spark in these sections comes from her nippy dissatisfied mother who rattles with frustration at life 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 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 uncooperative 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 when will she herself erupt we wonder and hope 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 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 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 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 the unknown bridesmaid is published by chatto windus book review margaret forster archive f the unknown bridesmaid permalink submitted by june not verified on march 23 2013 2213 i agree with you about this book i like her writing so much and i really missed the detail the sort of faberge egg quality of her books i was also very disappointed in the ending it was so abrupt i don t require closure all the loose threads tidied but it would have been more satisfying to have a less ismycopymissingthelastpages feeling to it reply editor s reply permalink submitted by julie on march 24 2013 657 thanks for your comment june yes i was baffled every other novel she s written is so perfect what went so wrong here it seemed like she was just tired  reply 