The Unknown Bridesmaid — Margaret Forster

A child psychologist struggles to come to grips with her own dark childhood memories, in this “mesmerizing, unsettling novel” (The New York Times).

When eight-year-old Julia was asked to be a bridesmaid at her cousin's wedding, she was thrilled. Nothing, not even her mother's resentment of the expensive, inconvenient traveling, could dull her excitement. But when the day finally arrived and she took her cousin's baby on a secret stroll around the block in his pram, her entire world shifted. She couldn't possibly know the impact the fateful trip would have on her future.

A lifetime later, Julia is a child psychologist working with young girls at risk. In her sessions, Julia has a knack for determining which of her young patients are truly troubled, and which are simply at the mercy of the oppressive adults around them. In this quietly powerful story of the relationship between past and current reality, Julia's own troubled childhood begins to invade her present, and she is forced to confront the events of that day -- and discover whether the truth about her past, and her guilt, is as devastating as she has always feared.

“The book it most reminded me of was Julian Barnes's The Sense of an Ending. There is the same sense of psychological detective story, of piecing together the fragments of an unresolved past.” -- The Guardian

“A gripping read.” -- The Observer