The Forgotten Garden
Posted by: Misha Stone
I just got lost in a book that is, cliche as it sounds, rather enchanting and beguiling. Kate Morton’s The Forgotten Garden is exactly the kind of book you can lose yourself in if you like complex family secrets, brooding English estates, craven and cursed aristocratic families and plucky young heroines.
In 1913, a 4-year-old girl is placed on board a ship to Australia by a woman she knows as the Authoress and is told to hide, to not reveal her name to anyone. But the Authoress never comes back, so when she is found on the wharf, a dockmaster and his wife take her in and raise her as their own daughter.
In 2005, that girl dies and her granddaughter, Cassandra, discovers that the secret of her grandmother’s past has not been fully unlocked. When Cassandra finds that her grandmother left her a cottage in Cornwall, she departs in search of the mystery that her grandmother never had a chance to uncover.
This 540 page book moves at a consistent pace and offers multiple perspectives and characters from which to view its complex plot. Morton has created an adult novel that shares the same atmosphere and appeal that many childhood stories do: it includes dark, mysterious fairytales and a foreboding sense of allure and danger.
The Forgotten Garden is just the kind of Gothic page-turner that will satisfy a book group as well as a trip to the beach. I cannot wait to read more of Morton’s work!
December 18th, 2011 at 2:50 pm
Is there a LIST OF CHARACTERS available?
I will be leading a book discussion and it would be very helpful.
Thank you.