Shadow Baby is well up to Margaret Forster's standard in novels. Evie - born in 1887 in Carlisle - is an undemanding, colourless, downtrodden creature. Shona - born 70 years later - is headstrong, striking and ambitious. The one thing the girls have in common is that they are both illegitimate, abandoned by their mothers for obvious reasons, and, in adulthood, are compelled to search for their natural mothers, with different results. Intriguing, if slightly disturbing feminist bias.
(Kathie Somerwil Ayrton - bwl 16 December 2002 ) |
