HOW TO MEASURE A COW

By Margaret Forster

Synopsis

Tara Fraser leaves London to start a new life in a Cumbrian town selected at random. She plans to obliterate her past. But one of her new neighbours, Nancy, wants to become her friend. Tara fights to keep herself to herself, but can she do it? Slowly, reluctantly, she discovers the dangers of trying to suppress the past and reject other people.

Sample Player

Narrator	Pat Steadman
Length	10hrs
Catalogue No.	11231
Publisher	Chatto & Windus; 2016

Other audiobooks by Margaret Forster

DAPHNE DU MAURIER

Vivid and revealing account of the life and character of the celebrated author of 'Rebecca' and 'Jamaica Inn'

THE DIARY OF AN ORDINARY WOMAN

On the eve of the Great War, thirteen year old Millicent starts her diary which she continues for over eighty years. From these diaries we see the social and economic changes of the twentieth century through the eyes of a remarkable woman.

GEORGY GIRL

Georgy is young, gregarious and fun - she is also large, self-confessedly ugly and desperate for love. As she struggles through a maze of conflicting demands and emotions, Georgy discovers that sex, a man and marriage are not everything, and that life has other alternatives to offer.

IS THERE ANYTHING YOU WANT?

Apart from being women, what do Mrs H, Edwina, Rachel, Ida Sarah, Dot and Chrissie have in common? They are all survivors, all connected to a clinic in a Northern town, who know what it means to live in the shadow of illness.

ISA & MAY

Isamay is trying to write a thesis about grandmothers in history, but is constantly pulled towards secrets in her own family. An only child she is named after her very different grandmothers Isa and May, jealous of each other as they both want to be the main influence in her life and her affections.

KEEPING THE WORLD AWAY

Lost, found, stolen, strayed, sold, fought over... This novel follows the fictional adventures, over a hundred years, of an early 20th-century painting and the women whose lives it touches. It is a novel about what it means and what it costs to be both a woman and an artist, and an unusual, compelling look at a beautiful painting and its imagined afterlife.

LADY'S MAID

This is a fictionalised account of the love story between Robert and Elizabeth Browning. It is narrated by Elizabeth Wilson who was employed at Wimpole Street as a lady's maid.

THE MEMORY BOX

Catherine never knew her mother, but family legend has her as a perfect, beautiful, talented woman.Before she died she left Catherine a sealed box for her to open as an adult. When Catherine eventually decides to open it she finds small packages inside which reveal for the first time the real woman behind the legends.

MOTHERS' BOYS

A vicious, squalid knife attack on fifteen-year-old Joe Kennedy by Leo Armstrong leaves both families reeling. What is it like to bring up a thug? Or to be the mother of a victim? The pain of all those affected is explored skilfully.

MY LIFE IN HOUSES

Margaret Forster was born in 1938 in the front bedroom of a house in Orton Road, a sparkling new council estate. This is her journey through the houses she’s lived in, to her beloved London home of today. She tells about what houses are to us, the effect they have on the way we live our lives and the changing nature of our homes.

OVER

When eighteen-year-old Miranda dies in a sailing accident her mother, Louise, and her siblings gradually come to terms with her death, but her father Don is determined to bring someone to account. Gradually his reaction to the tragedy starts to tear the family apart.

SHADOW BABY

Born in Carlisle in 1887, brought up in a children's home and by reluctant relatives, Evie, with her wild hair and unassuming ways, seems a quiet, undemanding child. Shona, born almost seventy years later, is headstrong and striking. She grows up in comfort and security in Scotland, the only child of doting parents. But there are, as she discovers, unanswered questions about her past. The two girls have only one thing in common: both were abandoned as babies by their mothers. Different times, different circumstances, but these two girls grow up sharing the same obsession. Each sets out to stalk and then haunt her natural mother. Both mothers dread disclosure; both daughters seek emotional compensation and, ultimately, revenge.

THE TRAVELS OF MAUDIE TIPSTAFF

Maudie Tipstaff leaves Glasgow for the first time to spend four months with each of her three children. What she finds in her children’s homes leads her to reassess her own life.