I never even heard of Margaret Forster before reading The Unknown Bridesmaid but it turned out to be quite an outstanding novel. Most writers who explore childhood trauma in their novels go for the sensational and the outlandish in order to sell books by titillating the reader’s appetite for the lurid. Pat Conroy, for instance, does just that. His depictions of extreme forms of child abuse shock but fail to offer any insight. Obviously, children who are raped, tortured and brutalized since infancy grow up to be pretty messed up. There is nothing in these depictions to nourish one’s intellect.
Unlike Conroy’s novels, The Unknown Bridesmaid has no artistic value whatsoever. It does, however, offer the most insightful, nuanced portrayal of the origins of “infant rage” that I have seen in any work of fiction. Julia, the novel’s protagonist, is not beaten, molested, or subjected to anything that could be called abuse. Even after she grows up and becomes a counselor to “difficult” children, Julia is incapable of articulating the reasons for her rage and provide an explanation for her blighted life. The damage done to her by careless, superficial, dismissive adults is hard to put into words because we don’t yet have a habit of articulating it. The suffering of children like Julia isn’t nearly as glamorous and shocking as that of Conroy’s characters or talk show participants. Forster, however, finds a compelling – albeit a tad pedestrian in terms of style – way of talking about it.
This single short novel will be a lot more useful to people than a stack of parenting books. Highly recommended.
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