{"id":6680,"date":"2016-03-10T12:59:32","date_gmt":"2016-03-10T12:59:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=6680"},"modified":"2016-03-14T11:00:46","modified_gmt":"2016-03-14T11:00:46","slug":"how-to-measure-a-cow-by-margaret-forster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=6680","title":{"rendered":"How to Measure a Cow by Margaret Forster"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Published by Chatto & Windus 3 March 2016<\/strong><\/p>\n

256pp, hardback, \u00a314.99<\/strong><\/p>\n

Reviewed by Alison Burns<\/strong><\/p>\n

Click here to buy this book<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Much-loved novelist, memoirist and biographer Margaret Forster, who died last month, was known for her ability to get under the skin.\u00a0 Here, in her final novel, she tells the story of a woman driven to murder.<\/p>\n

When Tara Fraser leaves London for a new life on the Cumbrian coast, she does so on a whim – and with a new, duller identity.\u00a0 Ten years in prison, and the crime that put her there, have left her without friends or family.\u00a0 Under an assumed name, Sarah Scott, she finds lodgings in an anonymous house in a dreary street, and mundane work in a local factory.\u00a0 Her neighbour, Nancy Armstrong, an older woman who also keeps herself to herself, cannot quite make her out.<\/p>\n

Bit by bit, as the two women circle around each other and local people talk, we learn that Tara was fostered from the age of three, became a teenage celebrity when she saved a child from drowning, studied chemistry, married a smooth older man with a sports car, and killed him.\u00a0 At the time, she was working in a laboratory.<\/p>\n

Tempted by letter to attend a reunion of her closest school friends down south, Tara\/Sarah – who has been stifling her true personality – lets her hair down (hair that, when loose, is red and curly).\u00a0 She is angry with these friends, who did not support her at her trial. Through their eyes, however, we piece together a portrait very different from the self she has been projecting and begin, uncomfortably, to see her as a cold-hearted schemer.<\/p>\n

Back in Workington, Tara\/Sarah gives in her notice and looks for a new place to live, where she can be more herself.\u00a0 At this, she loses the backing of her rehabilitation support team and upsets Nancy, who has been trying to be her friend.\u00a0 When Tara\/Sarah is seriously injured in a car-crash, Nancy is the only person she can turn to.<\/p>\n

The denouement of this story exposes Tara\/Sarah\u2019s personal history in more detail.\u00a0 This woman who talks of reigniting her old self \u2018from a bed of ash\u2019 was the child of a heroin addict.\u00a0 In her youth she was manipulative and given to tantrums – \u2018she made herself up all the time\u2019. \u00a0She tested the patience of her foster parents and friends, who nonetheless, at some level, did not entirely give up on her.<\/p>\n

This last novel by the author of Georgy Girl <\/em>is an altogether unusual take on dysfunction.\u00a0 By the end of it, even the reader is still somewhat on Tara\u2019s side. \u00a0Forster\u2019s knack of getting inside her characters heads works particularly well in the contrast between the thoughts of the woman-in-hiding and the thoughts of the person closest to her, Nancy.\u00a0 Through their prickly association, founded on loneliness rather than anything in common, Forster intensifies the gripping effect of Tara\u2019s struggle.\u00a0 If the BBC is looking for another uncomfortable TV drama series to follow its recent riveting Dr Foster<\/em>, they should consider this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Alison Burns<\/p>\n

Tempted by letter to attend a reunion of her closest school friends down south, Tara\/Sarah – who has been stifling her true personality – lets her hair down (hair that, when loose, is red and curly). She is angry with these friends, who did not support her at her trial. Through their eyes, however, we piece together a portrait very different from the self she has been projecting and begin, uncomfortably, to see her as a cold-hearted schemer[…] in Reviews<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-fiction-and-non-fiction","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6680"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6680\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6692,"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6680\/revisions\/6692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}