Calibre library
Rating: ****
Tags: Abandoned Children - Australia, Cornwall (County), Australia, England, Inheritance and Succession, Country Homes - England - Cornwall (County), Abandoned Children, Family Life, British, General, Literary, Grandmothers, Country Homes, English - Australia, Historical, English, Fiction, Domestic Fiction, Lang:en
Summary
From the #1 internationally bestselling author of
The House at Riverton, a novel that takes the reader
on an unforgettable journey through generations and across
continents as two women try to uncover their family’s
secret past A tiny girl is abandoned on a ship headed for Australia in
1913. She arrives completely alone with nothing but a small
suitcase containing a few clothes and a single book—a
beautiful volume of fairy tales. She is taken in by the
dockmaster and his wife and raised as their own. On her
twenty-fi rst birthday, they tell her the truth, and with her
sense of self shattered and very little to go on, "Nell" sets
out to trace her real identity. Her quest leads her to
Blackhurst Manor on the Cornish coast and the secrets of the
doomed Mountrachet family. But it is not until her
granddaughter, Cassandra, takes up the search after
Nell’s death that all the pieces of the puzzle are
assembled. A spellbinding tale of mystery and self-discovery,
The Forgotten Garden will take hold of your
imagination and never let go.
Amazon Best of the Month, April 2009: Like
Frances Hodgson Burnett's beloved classic
The Secret Garden, Kate Morton's
The Forgotten Garden takes root in your imagination
and grows into something enchanting--from a little girl with no
memories left alone on a ship to Australia, to a fog-soaked
London river bend where orphans comfort themselves with stories
of Jack the Ripper, to a Cornish sea heaving against
wind-whipped cliffs, crowned by an airless manor house where an
overgrown hedge maze ends in the walled garden of a cottage
left to rot. This hidden bit of earth revives barren hearts,
while the mysterious Authoress's fairy tales (every bit as
magical and sinister as Grimm's) whisper truths and ignite the
imaginary lives of children. As Morton draws you through a
thicket of secrets that spans generations, her story could
cross into fairy tale territory if her characters weren't
clothed in such complex flesh, their judgment blurred by the
heady stench of emotions (envy, lust, pride, love) that
furtively flourished in the glasshouse of Edwardian society.
While most ache for a spotless mind's eternal sunshine, the
Authoress meets the past as "a cruel mistress with whom we must
all learn to dance," and her stories gift children with this
vital muscle memory. --
Mari Malcolm
Read an excerpt and the reading group guide for
The Forgotten Garden.
Amazon Exclusive: A Conversation with Author Kate
Morton
Q:
The Forgotten Garden has some marvelous parallels with
Frances Hodgson Burnett's
The Secret Garden, and Burnett even makes an
appearance in your book as a guest at a garden party. Did her
book inspire portions of your story?
A:
The Secret Garden was one of my favourite books when I
was a little girl. Along with stories like
The Faraway Tree and
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, it's one of
many classic childhood tales in which children escape from the
adult world to a place in which their imagination is allowed
free rein. However, it wasn't my intention to reference
The Secret Garden when I first started writing.
In fact,
The Forgotten Garden (which was called
The Authoress until the final draft!) began with a
family story: when she was 21, my grandmother's father told her
that she wasn't his biological child. Nana was so deeply
affected by this knowledge that she told no one until she was a
very old lady and finally confided in her three daughters. When
I learned Nana's secret, I was struck by how fragile a person's
sense of self is and knew that one day I would write a story
about someone who experienced a similar life-changing
confession.
When I began to write about Nell, I knew that her mystery
was going to lead her to an English cottage, but the other
details were hazy. It was while I was auditioning English
locations for my book that I came across mention of the Lost
Gardens of Heligan in Cornwall. My interest was piqued, and I
began reading everything I could find about this place: a grand
country estate with astounding gardens that had been locked and
forgotten after its gardening staff were killed during the
first world war and the owners moved away.
When it was rediscovered in the late 20th century, nature
had reclaimed the estate, but the bones of the garden lay deep
beneath the overgrowth. This story really fired my imagination
and I knew that I'd not only found my location--Cornwall--but
that I would also need a forgotten garden in my story!
I was also eager to play with 19th-century gothic
conventions in
The Forgotten Garden. I adore books like
Jane Eyre and
Wuthering Heights, and I wanted a gloomy old house,
wicked aunts, secretive servants, hidden identities, mysterious
whisperings--the lot. But when my garden grew walls, I suddenly
remembered
The Secret Garden, and with my theme of fairy tales
and storytellers and the vital role that such things play in a
child's imagination, I couldn't resist introducing parallels
(including a walk-on role for Frances Hodgson Burnett). It was
a way of referencing my own childhood influences--Enid Blyton
and the Famous Five get a couple of nods throughout, too!--and
was a lot of fun.
Q: Both
The Forgotten Garden and
The House at Riverton, your first novel, celebrate the
imaginative lives of children, and the role that books and
family legends play in inspiring their creative life. Which
books fired your imagination as a child? Do you think fairy
tales play a role in preparing children for life's harsher
realities, and giving them courage? As children spend more time
being entertained--by TV and video games--and less time
inventing their own entertainments and exploring the natural
world, what are we losing?
A: I read voraciously as a child, and the more
I write the more I realize that an essential part of my
character (and certainly my inner writer) was formed in those
early years. Enid Blyton was my first and my favourite (
The Faraway Tree,
The Enchanted Wood,
The Secret Seven), sparking in me a lifetime love of
English countryside, dark, creepy woods, and hidden mysteries.
I also loved
Anne of Green Gables,
The Railway Children, Roald Dahl, and fairy tales of
all description, and had a mighty impressive collection of
second-hand
Trixie Belden books (collected when my mum, an antique
dealer, dragged us to second-hand shops with her).
I agree that fairy tales teach children about life's harsher
realities. They are our society's fables and, in their true
form, often contain messages that aren't easy to hear. There's
something compelling about their simple (sometimes brutal)
honesty though, and their heightened style creates a narrative
distance that sets them apart from more realistic children's
fiction so that the events depicted are understood to be taking
place in a world that is not our own. I think we sometimes
underestimate the ability of children to recognize and process
intelligent concepts, and sort the literal from the fairy tale.
Q: Both of your first two novels leap between
the present and past, with much of the story happening in the
late Victorian and Edwardian eras, in the lead-up to World War
I. What fascinates you about that particular period?
A: The early decades of the 20th century
fascinate me because they describe a moment of immense social,
political, and cultural transition, and because change ignites
conflict (on a large scale, as in the culminating war, but also
on a much smaller inter-personal level), which makes it
excellent fodder for a writer interested in stories about
people. Sociocultural expectations of women and the lower
classes were changed indelibly as a consequence of the first
world war, so a person who was 18 in 1912 had a markedly
different perception of their place in the world as compared to
a person who was 18 in 1922.
I'm particularly interested in the way the past is tethered
to the present: that is, I like to write about the past insofar
as it is a place to which we are still connected in some way. I
have a rather gothic insistence on the refusal of the past to
remain dead and buried!
The literary gothic (particularly that of the 19th-century
novel) is a genre for which I bear a special fondness. I wrote
my masters on Tragedy in Victorian Novels and my PhD topic
concerns the use of gothic tropes in contemporary fiction. My
interest isn't so much in the supernatural aspects of the
gothic (apparitions and the like) as much as metaphorical
ghosts--the haunting of the present by the past; guilt; memory;
identity issues; twins and doubles; the complicated ties of
family; anxieties over technology, etc. I think the gothic
resonates strongly in our technological time, not least in
matters of identity. Computers and the surfacing of social
networking sites have changed the way we represent ourselves
and interact with other people; medical advances mean we are
able to alter our appearances in ways we never could before; we
are even beginning to manipulate genes and use science to aid
and affect conception. This is all fertile ground for a fiction
writer!
Q: Your next novel,
The Distant Hours, will be set in World War II
England. Can you reveal any other details?
A: Not a lot, I'm afraid--I'm superstitious
about speaking too much about my people when their stories are
still unfolding!--but here's a little tiny taste:
The Distant Hours is set in 1940, during the period in
which the English were worried that the Germans might land on
the beaches any day. It takes place in a castle in Kent (with a
medieval tower and a huge ancient wood!), where the unexpected
arrival of a stranger causes ripples in the household that
trigger a tragedy....
In 1913, a little girl arrives in Brisbane, Australia, and
is taken in by a dockmaster and his wife. She doesn’t
know her name, and the only clue to her identity is a book of
fairy tales tucked inside a white suitcase. When the
girl, called Nell, grows up, she starts to piece together bits
of her story, but just as she’s on the verge of
going to England to trace the mystery to its source, her
grandaughter, Cassandra, is left in her care. When Nell
dies, Cassandra finds herself the owner of a cottage
in Cornwall, and makes the journey to England to finally
solve the puzzle of Nell’s origins. Shifting back
and forth over a span of nearly 100 years, this is a sprawling,
old-fashioned novel, as well-cushioned as a Victorian country
house, replete with family secrets,
stories-within-stories, even a maze and a Dickensian
rag-and-bone shop. All the pieces don’t quite mesh, but
it’s a satisfying read overall, just the thing for
readers who like multigenerational sagas with a touch of
mystery. --Mary Ellen QuinnAmazon.com Review
From Booklist