SOURCE: “The Stranger after the Funeral,” in Spectator, September 23, 1995, pp. 38–39.

In the following review, Colegate contends that Forster's Hidden Lives is a well-researched and highly readable family memoir.

Guilt is a common legacy of parents. We remember their last sad years and forget the earlier happier ones, we tell ourselves we failed to show them how much we loved them and made it all too obvious how much they irritated us, we understand too late that children too can be exasperating and obtuse. Margaret Forster's family memoir Hidden Lives: A Family Memoir is half investigation, half expurgation. She had long been intrigued—more than intrigued, fascinated—by the story told in her family of how a complete stranger had knocked on the door after her grandmother's funeral to enquire whether anything had been left for her in the will. Asked to explain herself to the three bereaved daughters...