The Battle for Christabel (1991)

Having experienced the issue of adoption in my own family - a relative trying to get custody of a child who (like Christabel) was ultimately adopted away by Social Services - I could totally identify with this book.

Narrator Isabel writes in a conversational style; both beginning and ending at the same point in time, shortly after losing any hope of custody of Christabel to the chosen adoptive parents. She then relates the whole saga of Christabel: from her own friendship with the child's mother Rowena, and her profound irritation with her laziness and irresponsibility. Her disapproval as the promiscuous Rowena decides to give up on men and give all her love to a child; her 'using' a West Indian admirer to get pregnant... And then Rowena's early years as a mother - devoted yet prone to depression - and her fatal accident, leaving her child with no obvious carer.

The fiercesome Mrs Blake (Rowena's elderly mother) is adamant she can't take her on, but nonetheless uses her money and education to hamper Social Services' efforts to find her a home. Rowena's sister and narrator Isabel are both career women, unwilling to give up their freedom...but as Isabel spends more time with Christabel, she finds her feelings are changing, but too late.

Margaret Forster brings personalities to life, and also the uncertainties that go with adoption. The reader wonders if Christabel would actually be better off with Isabel (who comes across as a pretty sharp and intolerant individual) than her adoptive one. Were Social Services just out for Christabel's best interests; how far were their actions shaped by personal feelings (dislike of Mrs Blake) or official guidelines set in stone (the determination that mixed-race Christabel must go to a black family) ?

As Isabel observes: 'Nobody will ever be able to say for certain that it was better for Christabel to go to the Carmichaels than to come to us. And it is that knowledge which hurts most, the knowledge that we will never know, that we will never be given the chance to find out what kind of mother I, or what kind of father Fergus, would have made. Perhaps I would have fulfilled myself in ways I do not even know.' ( )

This is a realistic view of adoption, and presents the viewpoints of the social workers, the biological relatives, the foster parent and the child in a thoughtful way. The narrator of the novel is the best friend of the biological mother, who died unexpectly. She eventually joins in the "battle for Christabel" when her maternal urges are accelerated by her love for Christabel. ( )

Forster has an extraordinary tendency to make her first-person narrators unsympathetic. She shows this here, and in "Over" , "The Memory Box" and "Hidden Lives".