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21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
An "Ordinary" but very interesting woman, 27 Oct 2004
By A Customer
I loved this book and read it in one sitting. What makes the diary of an "Ordinary" woman so compulsive? The diarist, Millicent King, has such an engaging character and I was surprised and delighted at her modern mindset and sometimes racy life choices - she is a woman ahead of her time. No passive product of a Victorian upbringing - she is an intelligent, fiesty and determindly independent person and following her life gives us an intriging insight into how her generation coped with the awful tragedy of two world wars. Although I was often moved to tears, her diary entries are also highly amusing - Millicent often being as opinionated and judgemental as a spoiled child. The other characters are just as strong and interesting and you long to know more of them. Can't say more than this without giving plot details away. Like other reviewers, I ignored the words "A Novel" on the front cover - you can't and don't want to believe this is fiction.
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28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
The real Millicent King, 7 Nov 2003
I can never resist reading any book by Margaret Forster. I loved this book about the fictional character Millicent King. I couldn't put it down! It was so real it has been hard to accept that it is in fact a novel. But of course the story is that of a thousand women who lived through two world wars and whose lives have spanned the century.Millicent King's life related to that of my mother and grandmothers, to my aunts and uncles and cousins - to all who lived through war and suffered the consequences. I think that Margaret Forster is a brilliant author and may she continue to write on and on ....
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26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
Millicent King isn't real?!, 6 Oct 2003
What a rollercoaster of a day! I finished this book this morning and spent the next few hours grieving - both for the death of this remarkable woman and for the book/diary ending. I had so enjoyed 'knowing' Millicent and felt quite cut adrift to have 'lost' her. I admit it - I had NO idea that the diaries weren't real! I searched the internet to find out more about this amazing woman and her family, only to find that she is a fictional character! Of course seems obvious now - I just hadn't noticed the references to fiction on the book cover. This is a great book - the emotional ambiguities and twists & turns of Millicent's life were, for me, devastatingly real, making this an intense and powerfully engaging reading experience. Inspires reflection on past and present connections with my own mother, my grandmothers, great aunts etc, and a sharp (and uncomfortable) awareness of the ease with which we can, in our relative youth, disregard/dismiss their knowledge, perspective, experience and insight (as did the twins - Connie and Toby - to Millicent). The rest of my day will be spent adjusting to the fact that there is no Millicent King!!
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
Fascinating and gripping!, 26 Mar 2003
By A Customer
Margaret Forster is definitely one of my favourite authors. Everything she writes is clever and thought-provoking, yet different from what has gone before. With this book she's achieved another success and I recommend it highly. The diary format follows the life of "an ordinary woman" through most of the 20th century, and how cleverly the style changes to reflect age and experience! On the face of it you might think the life of a woman who never married and had no children or successful career would be dull. Far from it - Millicent King faces life bravely, survives many tragedies, comes up trumps when it matters - and along the way you find yourself identifying with her and understanding her generation better than you did before.
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14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
An ordinary, but interesting woman indeed, 24 Jul 2003
I relished every sentence of Diary of an Ordinary Woman. The clarity and honesty of Millicent Kings' diary entries are engaging and, at times, very moving. For a modern day woman, Millicent's diaries, which span practically the entire twentieth century, provide a context in which the minutae of our own 'ordinary' lives can be evaluated. An excellent and compelling read.
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11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
Most will know this woman........., 18 Mar 2004
This is the collective story of so many woman of this generation. Ms Foster has captured the complexity of the social situations of this era perfectly. Anyone having older friends and relatives who lived through this era will see the definite ring of truth in it. What a terrible shame that people could feel so deeply but had to preserve the 'stiff upper lip' at all times. I can see my mother, my grandmother and aunts in this woman. Dont be put off by reviewers such as Dain1 - he/she probably has no acquaintances or knowledge of this era. Read it yourself and see....
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
Well, she could have fooled me..., 3 April 2003
By A Customer
What an amazing book....only very rarely do I come across a book that I don't want to end - and this is one; and it must because it tells the story of someone's life. Even though the world has changed a great deal since the events described in the book took place, her feelings as she tells her tale transcend the passing of time. I had to keep reminding myself that it isn't a REAL diary, that's how convincing it is. ....
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
A good travel read. , 15 May 2008
I read this book while travelling on the trains and was just captured by the attention to detail and by the narrater's talent for recording - yes, this book is a diary and what a witty acount you get. I found it hard not to think about the accounts in the book and how I sympathised with the main protagonist - you'll absolutely love it. A well deserved five stars.
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5 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
No ordinary woman!, 7 Mar 2007
Having read and loved Margaret Forster's "Hidden Lives" I looked forward to reading this book. I realised before starting the "diary" that it was fictional but was still interested in the idea of the story of a woman whose life spanned the 20th century. Ultimately, however, it failed to fulfil expectations. First, this is no ordinary woman. Her background is quite comfortable, indeed she has an independent income for most of her life from her parents' investments, giving her more freedom of choice regarding work and marriage than most. She never marries, which again is unusual in this period. She starts off adventurous and keen to travel but never takes up the offer of going to the USA by a family that she likes. Most of all, however, what I found was lacking in this "diary" were the small details of everyday life which really bring a diary to life (think of Samuel Pepys and Fanny Burney, for instance). Disappointing.
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7 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
Not one of her best, 20 April 2003
The period Millicent Price lives through is clearly going to be fascinating - the Great War, the General Strike, the Depression era of the 30's, the War, and then the Swinging Sixties, Greenham Common and Maggie Thatcher's Britain. But somehow, it all sems to glide over Millicent - she has, by her own admission, little interest or understanding of politics and social engineering and these momentous events barely ruffle the surface of her 'ordinariness'. She doesn't seem to feel many emotions and rejects several men in her determination to make her own way in life. Even with her one real lover, with whom she lives, he being married to a woman who refuses to divorce him (a dead-end in the 1940's)and who ends up dying in a Japanese POW camp, her emotions are restrained to the point of coldness. None of her family are very convincing and you're never quite sure what you're supposed to be feeling about them - the brother who comes back from the trenches mentally scarred, it seems for life - but then for no given reason appears to recover, marries a dominating, insensitive woman, who is thoroughly objectionable throughout the book and then suddenly comes good towards the end. Similarly, her nephew and niece, whom she is forced to adopt when their whole family is wiped out in the Blitz, change their characters without explanation, leaving several loose ends. Well-written, as Forster always is, but ultimately disappointing and definitely not one of her best.
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