I have great admiration for Margaret Forster's ability to fashion absorbing tales of family life from the most ordinary people in <i>Precious Lives</i>... Her insistence on validating the domestic, combined with her meticulous eye and painstaking research, creates a past which reveals modest lives with all their awkwardnesses and painful secrets.
Irish Times
Margaret Forster's books hold you in their grip and linger in the mind long after being put down...<i>Precious Lives </i>is unputdownable... A remarkably courageous book which we should read, inwardly digest and, above all, enjoy
- Mary Wesley, Daily Express
Forster is a terrific writer, witty and compassionate... [<i>Precious Lives</i>]<i> </i>manages to be completely honest wihout compromising the delicacy of its subjects: it is moving and funny too
- Cressida Connolly, Spectator
"Dying is an art," wrote Sylvia Plath. Writing about dying is also an art, one which Margaret Forster possesses in no small measure... [She] pursues her purpose with such flair that she succeeds, once again, in riveting her reader...<i> Precious Lives</i> adds up to an exemplary tribute to two striking individuals
- Patricia Craig, Independent