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05/09/08

Permalink 11:17:36 am, 403 words, 65 views   English (GB)
Categories: Novels

Kate Morton's Books

Reading The Forgotten Garden inspired me to hunt down its author’s earlier novel, The House at Riverton, which I’ve just finished.

Kate Morton is already a master of her chosen genre, writing about families and their secrets. She’s taken it a step further than the prolific Phyllis Whitney, of whose books I was once an avid reader so that I was disappointed when I could no longer find new ones.

The House at Riverton has a long cast of characters and it is a measure of Morton’s ability that the reader can keep tabs on all of them. (At least I could and I’m assuming I’m an average reader.) It also flits regularly between the present and the past, a technique that can be irritating but works well here. And it certainly engages your curiosity, building up a puzzle and fitting the last piece in place right at the end.

For me, though, her second book is the favourite. I believe she has learnt from the experience of the Riverton book, reducing the number of important characters and putting the narrative firmly in the third person, while taking us into different heads. The first book is written as a story told by one person, who was a servant and therefore an “invisible/insignificant” observer in the eyes of most of the other characters. When there is a section about an intimate love affair and scenes in which she was not present, she has to resort to explaining that the story had been told to her later. Although all this was very cleverly thought through and presented, it did sometimes seem a little awkward.

But there are many similarities between the two books. Although the second book begins in the author’s home country of Australia, both of them feature the grand home of an aristocratic English family and the degeneration of both the family and a building connected with it. The author also retained the family secrets theme, and takes the reader backwards and forwards in time, gradually unveiling the black secrets of this family.

I won’t reveal more because I recommend you read the books, if you haven’t already. But, if you can, read them the opposite way round, taking The House at Riverton first and then The Secret Garden. And then take a look at the website http://www.katemorton.com/

Happy reading.

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