OVER, Margaret Forster (First Edition Hardback) 2007

Margaret Foster writes fiction that is convincingly, disturbingly real, rooted in the everyday experience of apprantly ordinary lives that have been twisted out of shape by the messy business of living.

This is a novel about what happens after a tragedy in a family. Not the tragedy itself butits aftermath, what;s left when the tide recedes and it's over. A teenager has died in mysterious circumstances, and the different ways in which mother and father respond to this, how it plays out within the family and affects the other siblings, is at the heart of things. The story is narrated by Louise, mother and primary school teacher, trying to hold herself together and get on with life, trying to understand not 'what happened, but what is happening to them all in the wake of the accident, and why.

Don, her husband, cannot accept that his child'sdeath might have been an accident. He wants someone to blame, becoming obsessive in his quest for a reason, travelling restlessly neglecting work and family in pursuit of the 'truth'. Their other children handle the tragedy better than their parents. What they can't deal with is the way their parents are tearing each other and the family apart.

 

With characteristic subtley, Forster holds back the essential truth till the end, when we realise that Louise's matter-of-fact narration may not be the whole story. And it;s in this faultline that the real tragedy of this taut and heartbreaking novel lies.

A FIRST EDITION hardback published in 2007 by Chatto & Windus

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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