I read Kate Morton’s second book The Forgotten Garden earlier this year and was captivated by the story, finishing it in two days flat. I was eager to read her debut novel but my TBR pile was so high that it took me half a year to get started on it.
From its opening line, I was hooked.
“Last November I had a nightmare. It was 1924 and I was at Riverton again.”
The very obvious reference to du Maurier’s Rebecca sets the tone for the rest of the book. It's a Gothic mystery set in a sprawling English country house, a family torn by misunderstandings, jealousies and thwarted ambitions. It even has a mysterious death in a lake house. Instead of the scary Mrs. Danvers however, we have the charming Grace who joins Riverton's domestic staff as a naive girl of fourteen and who narrates the story as a ninety-nine year old woman at death's door. In 1924, a famous poet shot himself at the lake house at Riverton on the eve of a glamourous society party, witnessed only by the Hartford sisters. It is a clear case of suicide, but Grace is privy to the secret of what really happened, a secret she is determined to take with her to the grave.
The mystery itself is intriguing. I tried to second-guess the author through the book, and the ending still came as a surprise. But the mystery isn't all that appealed to me. The first half of the book brilliantly brings to life the divide between the people upstairs and downstairs. It made me empathise with the bond of loyalty that tied the servants to the household, a feeling that we in the modern world struggle to understand. This way of life is rocked by WW1, and again Morton brings to life the damage the war iinflicted on the soldiers who returned but could not assimilate into 'normal' life.
"[the war] took perfectly normal young men and returned them changed. Broken."
And forming the backdrop to all these events is the effervescent 1920s, the decade when the social order and constraints of the previous century were overturned.
The only criticism I would make is the pace of the book, especially in the first half. Some editing in the first hundred pages would have improved the tempo immeasurably. In spite of that, I would recommend this book, especially as a light summer read.
3 comments:
I think you enjoyed this a bit more than me.
I thought it was a really good mystery, but it was overly long. I lost interest in a few places.
I look forward to discovering which other books you decide to read and what you think of them.
Yet another book that I would like to read but I really really really ..R E A L L Y mustn't acquire another book until the TBR mountain range has been conquered.
Jackie, I think I'm a sucker for Gothic novels and usually like even the even the ones everyone hates. This isn't a perfect book by far, but it had enough atmosphere to make it enjoyable for me.
craftypeople, my TBR pile (tower) is like that too!
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