[In the following review, Prince offers a favorable assessment of The Seduction of Mrs. Pendlebury.]

Staying on the realism track: Margaret Forster beautifully demonstrates in The Seduction of Mrs. Pendlebury that its finest feature is a noble acceptance of the limitations of the likely. There are so many occasions in this brilliant study of the complacencies and dementias of old age when she might have tipped the whole thing into Gothic extravaganza: in the cause of ‘drama’ made a horror show out of her harrowing material. She never does. She knows her characters so well that though they seem the most unremarkable people—an elderly North London couple, their much-younger neighbours, some children, living and dead—all she has to do to get the most surprisingly dramatic results is simply to bring their everyday activities into sharp focus. At least, a fine novelist makes it seem that easy.

Nothing is more to Ms Forster's credit than the way her ‘smaller’ characters seem as developed and full of life as any others.