About
My Life in Houses Synopsis
'I was born on May 25, 1938, in the front bedroom of a house in Orton Road, on the outer edges of Raffles, a council estate. I was a lucky girl.' So begins Margaret Forster's journey through the houses she's lived in, from that sparkling new council house, built as part of a utopian vision by Carlisle City Council, to her beloved London house of today, via Oxford, Hampstead, the Lake District and a spell in the Mediterranean. This is not a book about bricks and mortar, or about how a house becomes a home with the right scatter of cushions. This is a book about what houses are to us, the effect they have on the way we live our lives. It is also a wonderful backwards glace at the changing nature of our accommodation: from blacking grates and outside privies; to cities dominated by bedsits and lodgings; to houses today being converted back into single dwellings, all open-plan spaces and bringing the outside in. Finally, it is a gently insistent, personal inquiry into the meaning of home.
About This Edition
ISBN: |
9780099593973 |
Publication date: |
25th February 2016 |
Author: |
Margaret Forster |
Publisher: |
Chatto & Windus an imprint of Vintage |
Format: |
Paperback |
Pagination: |
264 pages |
Primary Genre |
Non-Fiction Books of the Month
|
Other Genres: |
|
Recommendations: |
|
Press Reviews
Margaret Forster Press Reviews
'This is a beautiful, wise, profoundly moving book that had me gripped from start to finish... I love the unflinching quietness with which she delivers the most brutal of truths, as well as the exact and delicious descriptions of rooms, furnishings, gardens and neighbours... This is my favourite kind of book; one that is written with unshowy consummate skill, and which challenges me to think in a new way.'
- Rachel Joyce
'An enthralling account of her relationship with the houses she has loved... I think many people reading it will respond -- as I did -- to her very personal bond with the houses she has occupied, changed and drawn comfort from... and it is so movingly honest.'
-Virginia Nicholson, author of SINGLED OUT
'A wonderful, and affecting book about what makes a home, and the effect where we live has on how we live our lives.'
-Bookseller, Editor's Pick
Author
About Margaret Forster
Born in Carlisle, Margaret Forster is the author of many successful and acclaimed novels, including Have the Men Had Enough?, Lady's Maid, Diary of an Ordinary Woman, Is There Anything You Want?, Keeping the World Away, and Over, bestselling memoirs (Hidden Lives and Precious Lives) and biographies. She died in February 2016.
More About Margaret Forster