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jacki_f 's review for:
How to Measure a Cow
by Margaret Forster
This is a slow moving but totally absorbing book about a woman trying to build a new life after spending time in prison. When we meet Tara she has recently been released after serving 10 years (we will learn why over the course of the book). Her friends have drifted away and she gets abused by strangers on the street who recognise her from the publicity at the time of the trial. She decides to make a fresh start. She chooses a town in Cumbria at random, adopts a new name – Sarah Scott – and gets a mindless job in a factory. She deliberately tries to make herself as unobtrusive as possible: keeping to herself, wearing neutral colours, not engaging in conversations.
Living across the road from "Sarah" is Nancy, an elderly lady with little to do but observe the people around her. Nancy is a wonderful character, very much a product of her generation and her solitary life. Nancy is curious about Sarah and gradually the two form a guarded friendship. It is Nancy who had the farm upbringing that gives the book its title.
I had never read a book by Margaret Forster before and I am simultaneously delighted to discover that she has a huge back catalogue and gutted to realise that this is her last book, as she passed away in February. She has a wonderfully descriptive way of pulling you into the book and she keeps you riveted without spelling out for you exactly what is happening. It's not a long book but it is immensely satisfying.
Sarah/Tara is a complicated character who is intriguing but not likeable. By the end of the book I felt as if we the reader had been treated much like Nancy - only seeing what she wanted us to see, being slightly played. I felt like this was a book written by someone in complete control of their talent and it was masterful.
Living across the road from "Sarah" is Nancy, an elderly lady with little to do but observe the people around her. Nancy is a wonderful character, very much a product of her generation and her solitary life. Nancy is curious about Sarah and gradually the two form a guarded friendship. It is Nancy who had the farm upbringing that gives the book its title.
I had never read a book by Margaret Forster before and I am simultaneously delighted to discover that she has a huge back catalogue and gutted to realise that this is her last book, as she passed away in February. She has a wonderfully descriptive way of pulling you into the book and she keeps you riveted without spelling out for you exactly what is happening. It's not a long book but it is immensely satisfying.
Sarah/Tara is a complicated character who is intriguing but not likeable. By the end of the book I felt as if we the reader had been treated much like Nancy - only seeing what she wanted us to see, being slightly played. I felt like this was a book written by someone in complete control of their talent and it was masterful.