SOURCE: “Mothers and Daughters,” in Spectator, June 15, 1996, pp. 40–41.

In the following review, Brookner commends Forster's enthusiasm and feminist perspective in Shadow Baby.

Readers of this enthralling chronicle entitled Shadow Baby are advised to have a pencil and paper handy and to spend a few minutes in establishing a family tree. Leah Messenger, parents unknown, gives birth to Evie in Carlisle in the 1880s. In 1956 Hazel Walmesley gives birth to a baby, later called Shona, who is adopted by Archie and Catriona. Leah marries Henry and has two daughters, Rose and Polly. Rose grows up and gives birth to Josephine who marries Gerald Walmesley who is either the father or the stepfather of Hazel and therefore the grandfather of Shona. But he is dead, as is Evie's father, as is Josephine's father: men have a very short expectation of life in this novel, while those who are left intact...