Forster, Margaret

(British, 1938– )

Born in Carlisle, Forster is an acclaimed and distinguished biographer, but it is as a writer of fiction that she deserves greater recognition. Her first novel, Georgy Girl (1965), was made into a successful film, but since Mother, Can You Hear Me? (1979) she has examined the complicated relationships within families, especially between mothers and daughters. Have the Men Had Enough? (1989) is an honest, moving, and often very funny account of coping with Alzheimer's disease, and is based on the author's own experience. Mother's Boys (1994) looks at the consequences of violent crime from the point of view of the mothers of both victim and perpetrator who together try to understand what's happened. An unusual and brilliant off-shoot of her biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning was Lady's Maid (1990) in which Forster imagines the unknown life of a real person. She has used her gifts for both biography and fiction recently on her own family, exploring her roots in such books as Hidden Lives (1997) and Precious Lives (1998).

Deborah Moggach, Nina Bawden, Margaret Drabble. See ROMANCE  AG