• About
  • Listening
    • Baroque
    • Bluegrass and Country
    • Classical Fusion
    • Classical Period
    • Early Music
    • Film soundtracks
    • Folk Music
    • Jazz
    • Modern Classical
    • Modern Pop Fusion
    • Musicals
    • Romantic Classical
    • Spoken word
    • World Music
  • Reading
    • Fiction
      • Children’s and Young Adult Fiction
      • Classic writers and their works
      • Contemporary Fiction
      • Crime and Detective Fiction
      • Fictionalised Biography
      • Historical Fiction
      • Horror
      • Lighter-hearted reads
      • Literary Fiction
      • Plays and Poetry
      • Romance
      • SF
      • Short stories
      • Western
      • Whimsy and Fantastical
    • Non-Fiction
      • Arts
      • Biography and Autobiography
      • Ethics, reflection, a meditative space
      • Food and Drink
      • Geography and Travel
      • Health and wellbeing
      • History and Social History
      • Philosophy of Mind
      • Science and nature
      • Society; Politics; Economics
  • Reading the 20th Century
  • Watching
    • Documentary
    • Film
    • Staged Production
    • TV
  • Shouting From The Soapbox
    • Arts Soapbox
    • Chitchat
    • Philosophical Soapbox
    • Science and Health Soapbox
  • Interviews / Q + A
  • Indexes
    • Index of Bookieness – Fiction
    • Index of Bookieness – Non-Fiction
    • Index of authors
    • Index of titles
    • 20th Century Index
    • Sound Index
      • Composers Index
      • Performers Index
    • Filmed Index

Lady Fancifull

~ adventures in a mainly literary obsession

Lady Fancifull

Tag Archives: Margaret Forster

Aside

Margaret Forster – My Life In Houses It’s publication day!

06 Thursday Nov 2014

Posted by Lady Fancifull in Biography and Autobiography, History and Social History, Non-Fiction, Reading

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Book Review, Margaret Forster, My Life In Houses, Publication Day

My Life In HousesIt’s release day for Margaret Forster’s interesting and informative autobiography of a life told through the houses she lived in, which is as much a history of the times as a recount of her specific life within these times Here is my original review, written after receiving it as an ARC from NetGalley in digital form

My Life In Houses Amazon UK
My Life In Houses Amazon USA

Advertisement

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Print
  • Email
  • More
  • LinkedIn
  • Reddit
  • Pocket
  • Pinterest
  • Tumblr

Like this:

Like Loading...

Margaret Forster – My Life In Houses

29 Monday Sep 2014

Posted by Lady Fancifull in Biography and Autobiography, History and Social History, Non-Fiction, Reading

≈ 15 Comments

Tags

Autobiography, Book Review, Margaret Forster, My Life In Houses

A fine sense of place indeed

My Life In HousesMargaret Forster has always been a writer of precision about ordinary lives, creating very particular, sharply observed people in particular times and places who, because they are so specifically detailed, can stand for universals also.

Here, she writes her own autobiography, in many ways, but through the lens of her own precise fascination with the nuts and bolts of the material world we live in. Specifically, in this case the nuts and bolts being the houses we live in, the houses which shape, define, stand for and hold our lives in place and time.

The book (which I was very happy to receive as an advance review copy from the publishers) starts with a quote from D.H. Lawrence which outlines the premise:

The house determines the day-to-day, minute-to-minute quality, colour , atmosphere, pace of one’s life; it is the framework of what one does, of what one can do, of one’s relations with people………….looking back on my life, I tend to see it divided into sections which are determined by the houses in which I have lived, not by school, university, work, marriage, death, division, or war.

Forster is very particular and precise about the houses she has lived in, starting from modest origins in the late 1930’s on a council estate in Carlisle, and progressing through lodgings in Oxford, as a student, to renting with her husband Hunter Davies in the Vale of Health, and then, as they both became successful writers, buying their first house (where they have lived for over 50 years) in Kentish Town, and also including a couple of residences in Malta and Portugal, where they decamped with their young family, and then later in a weekend cottage in Caldbeck, and finally once their children had grown, to live for 6 months of the year in isolation in the Lake District and then back to Kentish Town for the autumn and winter

Forster and Davies some years ago in front of their Loweswater Home

Forster and Davies some years ago in front of their Loweswater Home

Along the way in this fascinating book Forster examines not only her own particular life by reference to the houses she lives in, but changing social mores, trends in the mobility of neighbourhoods, communities and social classes, and the way in which place becomes a repository of a life, rich through the memories accrued in connection with that place.

For example, it was fascinating to read that even so recently as the early 30s, when the social housing estate where she would be born some years later, was being built, in order to ‘clear the slums’ of Caldewgate, Carlisle, budgeting considerations made decisions which a modern reader finds appallingly mean-minded. Very few of the Caldewgate dwellings had an internal water supply, and none had their own lavatory. The new houses built on the Raffles estate, by contrast would have not only their own water supply, but even a bathroom, which contained a bath – but no sink, and more pertinently, no toilet. Cost savings created the decision to give each dwelling its own lavatory – but made this an outhouse.

Jumping much further forward to when Forster and Davies buy their own very ramshackle first house on ‘the wrong side of the Heath’ (all they could afford), in Parliament Hill Fields, this came cheapish because it contained a sitting tenant as a result of the 1957 rent act. Of course, as time wore on, the area became desirable, gentrified and smart, and she details the changing demographics, not to mention the years of pouring money into a house which initially they thought they would live in ‘until they could afford Hampstead’ but still inhabit to this day, their relationship with a house initially dour, depressing and glum having changed, as dwelling and owner ‘connect’

Forster's Room in Kentish Town, photo by Eamonn McCabe

Forster’s Room in Kentish Town, photo by Eamonn McCabe

She also addresses, in a very direct way, the facing of her own mortality, with an as yet unresolved (in the pages of the book) debate on whether to die at home or in a hospice, when the options for ‘managing’ her diagnosis of cancer which has metastasised, run out.

Forster’s narrative voice, her ability to tell a story engagingly, with light touch humour and warmth, make this an engaging as well as a fascinating read. She is a writer who draws the reader in, rather than holds them at bay, creating a feeling of intimacy.

Publication date is November 6th in the UK

My Life In Houses Amazon UK
My Life In Houses Amazon USA

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Print
  • Email
  • More
  • LinkedIn
  • Reddit
  • Pocket
  • Pinterest
  • Tumblr

Like this:

Like Loading...

Page Indexes

  • About
    • Index of Bookieness – Fiction
    • Index of Bookieness – Non-Fiction
    • Index of authors
    • Index of titles
    • 20th Century Index
  • Sound Index
    • Composers Index
    • Performers Index
  • Filmed Index

Genres

Archives

January 2023
M T W T F S S
 1
2345678
9101112131415
16171819202122
23242526272829
3031  
« Mar    

Posts Getting Perused

  • William Butler Yeats - Vacillation
    William Butler Yeats - Vacillation
  • David Bez - Salad Love
    David Bez - Salad Love
  • Alan Sillitoe - Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
    Alan Sillitoe - Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
  • Mick Herron - Dead Lions
    Mick Herron - Dead Lions
  • About
    About
  • Jean-Claude Ellena - Diary of a Nose: A Year In The Life of a Parfumeur
    Jean-Claude Ellena - Diary of a Nose: A Year In The Life of a Parfumeur
  • Banished - TV Drama
    Banished - TV Drama
  • Christiane Ritter - A Woman In The Polar Night
    Christiane Ritter - A Woman In The Polar Night

Recent Posts

  • Bart Van Es – The Cut Out Girl
  • Joan Baez – Vol 1
  • J.S.Bach – Goldberg Variations – Zhu Xiao-Mei
  • Zhu Xiao-Mei – The Secret Piano
  • Jane Harper – The Lost Man

NetGalley Badges

Fancifull Stats

  • 162,789 hits
Follow Lady Fancifull on WordPress.com

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Follow on Bloglovin

Tags

1930s setting Adult Faerie Tale Andrew Greig Arvo Pärt Autobiography baroque Beryl Bainbridge Biography Biography as Fiction Bits and Bobs Bits and Pieces Book Review Books about Books Cats Children's Book Review Classical music Classical music review Classic Crime Fiction Colm Toibin Cookery Book Crime Fiction David Mitchell Dystopia Espionage Ethics Fantasy Fiction Feminism Film review First World War Folk Music Food Industry France Gay and Lesbian Literature Ghost story Golden-Age Crime Fiction Graham Greene Health and wellbeing Historical Fiction History Humour Humour and Wit Ireland Irish writer Irvin D. Yalom Janice Galloway Japan Literary Fiction Literary pastiche Lynn Shepherd Marcus Sedgwick Meditation Mick Herron Minimalism Music review Myths and Legends Neil Gaiman Ngaio Marsh Novels about America Other Stuff Patrick Flanery Patrick Hamilton Perfumery Philip Glass Philosophy Police Procedural Post-Apocalypse Psychiatry Psychological Thriller Psychology Psychotherapy Publication Day Reading Rebecca Mascull Reflection Robert Harris Rose Tremain Russian Revolution sacred music Sadie Jones Sci-Fi Science and nature Scottish writer Second World War SF Shakespeare Short stories Simon Mawer Soapbox Spy thriller Susan Hill Tana French The Cold War The Natural World TV Drama Victorian set fiction Whimsy and Fantasy Fiction William Boyd World music review Writing Young Adult Fiction

Blog at WordPress.com.

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
  • Follow Following
    • Lady Fancifull
    • Join 771 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Lady Fancifull
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...
 

You must be logged in to post a comment.

    %d bloggers like this: