The Unknown Bridesmaid, by Margaret Forster – review

The power of the past, the directive hand of childhood: the themes of The Unknown Bridesmaid are familiar fictional territory. But Margaret Forster has a deft and idiosyncratic touch in this story of child psychologist Julia, whose young clients reflect the trauma of her own early years. Sessions with Camilla, Precious, Janice, Claire and others are intercut with Julia’s own memories, so that gradually we learn what happened to her after her father’s early death and that of her mother when Julia was a teenager.

For the reader, she presents something of a challenge. The memories are candid: her behaviour was insufferable. Taken in by her kindly cousin Iris and husband after her mother’s death, she is horrible to their children; she steals, and does her level best to cause trouble for the amiable husband.

And there is the dark cloud of an earlier transgression when she was much younger, which had disastrous and haunting consequences. She feels guilty, indeed, now in adult life, a guilt that seems to be subsumed into her present occupation, trying to discover what is wrong — if, indeed, there is something wrong — with young girls who have behavioural problems.

The challenge for the reader is that Julia is unlikable. That she comes across as solipsistic is inevitable — a novel whose protagonist is examining her own life is bound to feature solipsism. But there is something almost complacent about her, and a sense of a person so immersed in what has happened to her as to have lost the capacity for relationships. A failed marriage; few friends, it would seem. But — the saving grace — a shrewd and sympathetic eye and ear for troubled children.

The various children wind in and out of Julia’s own story — truanting, beating up their siblings and thieving.