- Jubilee offer: spend £10 or more on any product sold by Amazon.co.uk on or before June 6 and you can buy "The Diamond Jubilee - A Classical Celebration Album" for just £2.50. Here's how (terms and conditions apply)
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £0.25
Get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade in The Memory Box for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £0.25, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Special Offers and Product Promotions
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
"Susannah was apparently perfect, as the dead so often become": Margaret Forster's The Memory Box opens with the challenge which runs right through this book. How do you get to know the dead? How can the dead make you get to know them? In this case, by leaving a box of strange, and disconnected, objects through which a daughter, Catherine, learns to trace the contours of her mother's life and the depths of her own loss in never having known her. Susannah, her mother, died when Catherine was six months old; she is brought up, happily, by her father and step-mother. Only on their deaths does she open the "memory box" and enter into the everyday complexity (there's no melodrama here) of her family life. Was Susannah perfect? And why did her loving husband marry so soon after her death? What has Catherine missed in never having known her? Critically acclaimed for, amongst others, Lady's Maid and Mothers' Boys, Forster brings a keen, and unsentimental, eye to her (at times remarkably painful) topic. She is, also, the biographer of Daphne du Maurier, and Forster has taken on her legacy of menace and romance (think of Rebecca) in this intelligent, and compelling, novel. --Vicky Lebeau
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
Product Description
A young woman leaves a sealed memory box for her baby daughter before she dies. Years later, as a young woman herself, Catherine finds her mother's box full of unexplained, even weird objects. Finding out what the objects represent is her only chance to find out about the mother she never knew ...
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
First Sentence
SUSANNAH was apparently perfect, as the dead so often become. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
SUSANNAH was apparently perfect, as the dead so often become. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Although it is obvious from the opening page that Foster is an excellant writer, this book is too heavy and depressing even for someone like me, who usually soaks up anything with a bit of real depth.
It seems as if Foster is trying to convey the multitude of feelings her heroine is exeperiencing, and in many ways she succeeds, but it felt to me like she was playing with depth when infact the characterisations were decidely shallow.
I struggled not to put the book down in frustration and boredom, and when I had finally finished it I was left with that terrible downer you can only get from a disappointing read.
If you're looking for something superficially 'deep' and angst ridden then read this book. Otherwise give it a miss.
It seems as if Foster is trying to convey the multitude of feelings her heroine is exeperiencing, and in many ways she succeeds, but it felt to me like she was playing with depth when infact the characterisations were decidely shallow.
I struggled not to put the book down in frustration and boredom, and when I had finally finished it I was left with that terrible downer you can only get from a disappointing read.
If you're looking for something superficially 'deep' and angst ridden then read this book. Otherwise give it a miss.
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I read a short review of this book and decided to try it because I could identify with the subject. It is about a woman, Catherine, who's mother has died before she is old enough to remember her, which is exactly what happened to me. This is the first book that I have found dealing with this subject, and the more I read the more I could see myself in Catherine. The author has so much insight into what it is like to have never known your own mother, and also the fact that Catherine was an only child like myself made it even more amazing to read.
There were some parts of the book that made me gasp with our similarity, one phrase Catherine uses to explain her need for solitude is "only child syndrome". I have used that expression dozens of times to explain my need for my own space, and the way she finds it hard to keep friends as she doesn't put much effort into relaionships. I can identify with it all!
I think that only people who have lost their mothers at an early age will truly be able to understand this book, and I would like to thank Margaret Forster for helping me understand and come to terms with so many of my own emotions through reading it.
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The idea of this story is so good that I couldn't wait to read it. A girl, Catherine, is left a box by her mother, who died when she was a baby. Catherine discovers this box when she is thirty-one, the same age as when her mother had died. Inside the box are eleven objects, all of them meaningless at first, but when Catherine begins to examine each object, she finds new truths, not only about her mother, but about herself and her stern Aunt Isabella. Through these objects, Catherine finds that her mother was not the sweet and innocent woman that everyone likes to remember her as.
However, when I came to read it, the narrative is so full of (to me) irrelevant ramblings that I found myself skimming certain parts, just to get to a bit that might reveal something of what the memory box was intended to do. The book is obviously well-written but, as another reviewer put it, don't read it unless you are used to heavy-going reading!
However, when I came to read it, the narrative is so full of (to me) irrelevant ramblings that I found myself skimming certain parts, just to get to a bit that might reveal something of what the memory box was intended to do. The book is obviously well-written but, as another reviewer put it, don't read it unless you are used to heavy-going reading!
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Most Recent Customer Reviews
In Search of the Mother
An elegantly-constructed novel about confronting the past. Catherine's mother Susannah died when she was a baby. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Kate Hopkins
Good book recommended
Well worth a read, in depth emotions that challange your views & twist & turns. Well consider and well written
Published 8 months ago by M. N. Wilson
So much more than a box of old stuff
Sparsely written in an accessible style without too much lengthy description or unneccessary dialogue this was the journey inside the mind of Catherine - a tough, unhappy character... Read more
Published 13 months ago by thisladylovesthelibrary
A meditation on memory
Catherine's birth mother Susannah died when she was just a young baby, leaving her with no memories of her at all. Read more
Published 15 months ago by The story fiend
Memory Boxes Justified
If you were dying would you put items into a Memory Box? If so, why? And what would you place in it? Susannah dies at the age of 31 leaving a baby (Catherine) who is 6 months old. Read more
Published 20 months ago by Bookaholic babe
Totally absorbing - but in a way you wouldn't expect
I became totally engrossed in this book. I expected it to be a type of thriller/mystery when stories of the contents of the box unfolded. Read more
Published on 5 Oct 2001
a wonderful read and full of many intriguing mysteries
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and found it an enthralling read. It was excellantly written and the first Margaret Forster book I've actually read. Read more
Published on 25 Aug 2001
good idea - irritating style
There's a wonderful central idea here,but I found Forster's prose style really got up my nose on occasions. Read more
Published on 30 July 2001
A Thank you to Margaret Forster
There are so many aspects of Catherine's life that I can totally relate to in The Memory Box. The things she has done in her life, similar events, feelings and thoughts so... Read more
Published on 12 Feb 2001
Different and absorbing
If you like a novel with nice, neat Agatha Christie-type answers to a series of intriguing problems, then don't buy this book. Read more
Published on 6 Sep 1999
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
|
|
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
