Precious Lives

by Margaret Forster (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  1998

  $3.47

  A follow-up to Margaret Forster's Hidden Lives (a family memoir of three generations of women), this account takes up the story of her gritty northern father. He was not a man to answer questions - least of all about life and death - so the author attempts to answers them for herself as she looks back at her father's life and indomitable character from the perspective of his ninth decade, evoking incidents from her Cumbrian childhood, his working life and stubborn old age, trying to make sense of their largely unspoken relationship and of his tenacious hold on life and his family.

• Used

  Paperback
  1999

  $3.47

  A brilliant follow-up to Hidden Lives, Margaret Forster's most personal book yet takes up the story of her gritty, northern father, Arthur, intertwined with that of her sister-in-law, Marion, who died of cancer at almost half the age of the 96 year-old Arthur. Margaret Forster's father was not a man to answer questions - least of all questions about life and death, so she attempts to answer them for herself. As Forster looks back at Arthur's life and indomitable character, she evokes incidents from her childhood, his working life and stubborn old age, trying to make sense of their largely unspoken relationship, and of his tenacious hold on life, and on his family. Arthur and Marion's lives were ordinary, and apparently unremarkable, but, when faced with death, lives like these become strangely precious.