The Secret Keeper

The Secret Keeper

by Kate Morton

★★★★☆

Kate Morton has earned a reputation as an expert gothic mystery writer. If you pick up one of her fat novels you know what you’re in for. So far I have loved each of her novels, The Forgotten Garden, The Distant Hours and The House at Riverton, but I thought Morton might disappoint me this time. I made it about ¾ of the way through this novel and still didn’t know if I liked it. Needless to say I judged it too soon, I shouldn’t have doubted her.

A famous actress, Laurel, returns home to visit her ailing mother, Dorothy. As she reconnects with her sisters and explores her childhood home she can’t help but reminisce about some strange details from her childhood, particularly a violent event that happened when she was a teen. She begins to learn more about her parents’ history as she researches their lives during World War II.

The book switches between multiple points of view, Laurel, Dorothy, Dorothy’s boyfriend Jimmy and her friend Vivien. I loved this aspect of the book because it gives the reader a chance to get to know each character and to question the honesty of the narrative. I really loved the pieces of the story set during WWII. Though the middle was a bit slow for me the end was well worth the wait.

BOTTOM LINE: If you’re a fan of Morton’s novels you can’t miss this one! If you’re new to her work I would check out The Forgotten Garden, my personal favorite. She’s a sure bet for anyone who loves a great gothic mystery.  

I read this for the R.I.P. Challenge hosted by Stainless Steel Droppings.

Top 10 Contemporary Books Paired With a Classic

This week's Top Ten from The Broke and the Bookish asks for the top 10 contemporary books that would be great paired with a required reading book. I picked one classic and one recent book for each pair. 

1) Howards End and On Beauty: These two are an obvious match. One is a book about the unlikely meeting of two very different families and the other is a modern re-telling of the same story. The two are just different enough to feel completely unique.

2) Little Women and March (by Geraldine Brooks): Four women grow up with their mother while their father is away fighting the Civil War. Little Women is famous for barely mentioning the patriarch of the clan, March tells his story.

3) Flowers for Algernon and Marcelo in the Real World: Two men with mental limitations try to find their way in the world. Both are characters that get under your skin and stay with you long after the final page.

4) King Lear and A Thousand Acres: Shakespeare and Iowa don’t seem like an obvious pairing, but the tragedy of a king and his daughters works well when retold as a Midwestern farmer and his troubled family.

5) Babbit and The Corrections: I think I’ve made it clear that I do NOT enjoy Franzen, but this pairing shows what works and what doesn’t. Both are books about unhappy Midwestern families, one does it well; the other just comes across as whiny.

6) Gone with the Wind and The March (E.L. Doctorow): A classic about the downfall of the South paired with a book about Sherman’s march through the South, burning it down as he goes. Bonus: Vanity Fair would be another great classic to pair with Gone with the Wind. The two share so much, including a kind and gentle heroine who is best friends with a selfish and ambitious woman.

7) A Moveable Feast and The Paris Wife or French Milk: Hemingway’s memoir about his time in Paris in the 1920s pairs nicely with the fictional version of his wife’s life during that same period. It would also work perfectly with French Milk, a twenty-something’s graphic novel about her trip to Paris.

8) The Sign of Four and The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie: Sherlock Holmes, the most famous detective of all-time and a 10-year-old with impressive deductive skills. Both have a hard time with normal social interaction, but they always solve the case.

9) The Iliad and The Odyssey and The Song of Achilles: Greek epic poetry can be daunting, but paired with this love story the characters might become more accessible.

10) The Secret Garden and The Forgotten Garden: Two novels about secret gardens, one meant for kids, the other with a gothic mystery twist.

The Forgotten Garden

The Forgotten Garden
by Kate Morton
★★★★★

When she was only four years old, Nell was put on an ocean liner traveling from London to Australia all by herself. She’s adopted by a family in Australia and isn’t told the truth about her history until she’s 21. The novel unfolds the mystery of Nell’s life, while at the same time introducing us to her granddaughter Cassandra and a young woman from her past named Eliza.

The book flips back and forth between Eliza’s story at the turn of the century (1900-1913), Nell’s story (mainly 1975), and Cassandra’s in 2005. I loved all three of the main characters because they were survivors. They each had their own tragedies that influenced the choices they made, but those back stories didn’t hijack the main plot line, they just enhanced it.

There’s also a great supporting cast of characters, both good and bad guys. Each new character made the story richer, adding layers to the mystery. The pacing is wonderful. There is just the right amount of information revealed as you go along. Each answer introduces new questions to the reader and you don’t want to stop until you know the whole story. The style reminded me a bit of The Thirteenth Tale, Fingersmith and Shadow of the Wind, which in my opinion, is high praise.

When I started they book I thought it was going to be a sweet story about an English village or something. I had no idea it was a gothic mystery. It turned out to be just my kind of novel, one I didn’t want to put down.

I also really liked that the story isn’t steered by a romance. It is, first and foremost, the women’s stories. Their three lives are intertwined and as the book goes along we get to discover how. It doesn’t hurt that much of it is set in England. I’m a fan of the spooky, but gorgeous English countryside as a setting.

In addition to the mystery itself, the book addresses a few other issues. It questions how important your identity is. Does knowing who you are and where you come from matter? It also looks closely at the relationship between mothers and daughters.

All-in-all I loved the book. For me, it had the perfect balance of character driven story, mystery, and historical fiction, with a splash of fairy tale thrown in for good measure.

“Did those with passage booked on death’s silent ship always scan the dock for faces of the long departed?”

“That, my dear, is what makes a character interesting, their secrets.”

“I sometimes feel my entire life is a series of accidents and chances – not that I’m complaining. One can be very happy having relinquished all expectation of control.”

“You make a life out of what you have, not what you're missing."

“Cassandra always hid when she read, though she never quite knew why. It was as if she couldn’t quite shake the guilty suspicion that she was being lazy, that surrendering herself so completely to something so enjoyable must surely be wrong.”