This is the first Margaret Forster book I have come across and I have to admit that I was intrigued by the title immediately. The idea of stumbling across a box full of memories made for you from a mother who was near to death in your infancy works well as a hook. This is what Catherine Musgrave has to investigate after opening the box at 31. So she goes through the 11 items and tries to find logic behind them. What would they have meant to a mother she never knew. Will this hunt risk sullying the memory of her beloved stepmother Charlotte?Even though this book is no lengthy tome, there are some sections that feel like drudgery. As interested as I was to find out the significance of the items, the journey to get there was too long and ponderous. The narrator is constantly smacking us over the head with her judgements. She's spoilt, over indulgent, intolerant, and extremely immature for a woman in her thirties. I've read a book penned by a diagnosed sociopath who was less interested in themselves than this character is. The writing style is good in the whole, but I wanted to keep screaming "get on with the story!!!!!!" I don't care what you want for breakfast! As for the importance of the box in bringing a mother alive for Catherine? Well it was a little disappointed. All I can say is that I'm glad it wasn't longer. I wouldn't recommend this book to readers who enjoy story development over character development.
This is the first of Margaret Forster's books that I've tried reading; and it won't be the last.Susannah died when her daughter Catherine was just six months old, but Catherine grows up happily with her father's second wife becoming her Mummy and never wants to find out about Susannah. However when Susannah knew she was dying she assembled a "memory box" for her baby daughter. Finally opening the box as an adult, having ignored it for years, Catherine tries to piece together this jigsaw of a legacy.I really liked the premise, I thought it might be a bit of a manufactured sort of a story but it came over naturally enough. The objects in the box aren't obvious and I thought that Catherine could probably have taken a different path through them and found out different things about Susannah. Which isn't the point really, the point is that it was a good story and the characters were consistent.The narrative reminded me of Barbara Vine a little, possibly because there is a quiet sense of impending doom in the "what will she find out about her mother?" question, but there isn't a hugely terrible hidden secret in here like there would be with Vine. It's more a case of the surprising things that are hidden in ordinary lives. Enjoyable read, good writing, an interesting plot and great characters. I don't ask for much more than that from a book really!
A 31 year old woman finds a box in her late farther's attic, left for her by her Mother who died when she was six months old. Inside the box are a series of seemingly meaningless objects, with no explanation note or message. The main character Catherine has never been curious about her birth-mother before, she had a wonderfully loving relationship with her step-mother, and it's only now after her step-mother, farther and grandmother are dead that she decides she wants to get to know the woman who gave birth to her, through the box that was left to her. She sets out on a hunt for the people who knew her mother in life, not least her Mother's cold-hearted sister. A wonderful tale, with love, mystery and the stories of long passed events at the center of it.
—Cazzie
Another book passed on to me, this time by my mother whom said I must read it if I enjoyed SJ Watson's "Before I Go To Sleep". A slim book of a short but complex and quite a boring tale. It could be better written in parts, as the storyline did drag on, it was just the secrecy of what was in that dam box that kept me there until the end. Basically Catherine is 6 months old when her mother dies of an undiscussed cause. Laboriously it runs through each item that her mother places in a keepsake box for when she is older so that Catherine can learn who her mother really was. Catherine's life is an upside down mess of emotions, struggling to have relationships because she does not know where she came from. Her father has the box but she has never been able to open it until when she is 31 and her father passes away she has to go and clear the house for selling and discovers the box hidden in the attic in opened. Each item sends her on a journey to discover how it relates to her mother. The story does not feel realistic but is still worth a read if you like cryptic tales, nothing to rave about.
—Heidi Db
I was hoping that Catherine would discover something huge about Susanna. In this case I was totally disappointed. I do not fancy people who seem to enjoy wallowing in their unhappy states, and clearly Catherine is one of such. she cuts off people who try to reach out to her (admits she has no friends to speak of, ignoring them till they take the hint and leave her alone), Edging out Tony, who clearly loves her, then digging deep into her to find fault with Charlotte, who she describes as having loved her unconditionally, so much that she did not feel that she missed Susanna. Not everything in life is to be analyzed and understood. Some things just are, and should be taken as such. Life is to be enjoyed, something Catherine needs to learn!
—Rachel
