strange and random happenstance

The Clockmaker's Daughter by Kate Morton
Published by: Atria Books
Publication Date: October 9th, 2018
Format: Hardcover, 512 Pages
Rating: ★★
To Buy

Elodie Winslow works as an archivist for Stratton, Caldwell and Co. Mainly cataloging the detritus of one man's life. But one day she stumbles on something she finds remarkable, an old leather satchel that contains an artist's sketchbook and a photograph of an arrestingly beautiful woman wearing the Radcliffe Blue, an heirloom diamond that has long been missing. Elodie isn't interested in the diamond, even if it would be quite the find, she's interested in a drawing of a house in the sketchbook. For some reason it reminds her of a house her mother used to tell stories about. She finds out that it's Birchwood Manor, an estate in the Upper Thames region. Instead of planning her elaborate society wedding Elodie decides to investigate the mystery of Birchwood Manor. Birchwood Manor was rumored to be built on land blessed by a Fairy Queen because of two children whose lives were saved. The two children are supposed to haunt the house and that is what brought the Magenta Brotherhood to the house in 1862. The leader, Edward Radcliffe, and his muse Lily Millington are the center of a summer of artistic expression. But things take a tragic turn. When Edward's ex fiance arrives she is killed and Lily and the Radcliffe Blue disappear into the ether. Because Lily had a secret past as a pickpocket it's assumed that she and her old partner have run off to America with their bounty. But the past is never as it seems and the house has gone through many hands since then. In 1899 the house became a school that Edward Radcliffe's sister Lucy actually opened. But another tragedy strikes Birchwood Manor when a student dies in a boating accident. In 1928 the house has long been sealed up but a historian gets the right to stay on the property to research Edward and Lily. There he meets a young girl, Juliet, who in 1940 will come to Birchwood Manor to escape the blitz with her three children. But what does this all have to do with Elodie's memory of this house and her mother? Only Birchwood Manor holds the key and it has keep it's secrets close for a long long time.

Kate Morton is an author who in theory should be one of my favorite authors. She writes exactly the kind of books I want to read, but somehow never sticks the landing. I've read all her books out of order, which is fine because they aren't interconnected, but if I sequence them chronologically what amazes me is that as she's developed as a writer her books have greatly improved as evidenced by my reviews. But then came The Clockmaker's Daughter. After The Secret Keeper in 2012 I had really started to anticipate her new books. I started following her on social media and the buildup to The Clockmaker's Daughter had me tingling in anticipation. Seriously, Kate Morton and the Pre-Raphaelites are so in my wheelhouse. I couldn't wait. I was so excited I even picked it as my selection for my book club to read. Now I will say that a confluence of events happened that made reading this book happen under not the best circumstances, but I don't think that would change my opinion of it. The Clockmaker's Daughter is a big step back for Morton. Quirks and ticks that were common in her early books and had been phased out were back. The writing felt immature and didn't have a clear voice coupled with an unwieldy cast of characters. Which leads me to the conclusion this has to have been a trunk book. A trunk book is a book you write and lock in the deepest and darkest of trunks because you want no one to read it because it's that bad. It's you before you understood how to be a writer. But occasionally authors hit a dry spell and their hand is forced by the demands of their agents, editors, and publishing houses. Therefore trunk books can get published. I believe the first time I heard of the official moniker "trunk book" was in the television adaptation of Stephen King's Bag of Bones. And I'm sure King has dug up a few trunks over the years to meet his publishing demands. And I think that is exactly what happened here. Morton isn't the most prolific of authors, she's only published six books, but those six books have a through line in style that is all knotted when it comes to The Clockmaker's Daughter. Yes, I'm sure she tried to polish it up a bit, but it just didn't have any luster. What's more, the Pre-Raphaelites are barely in this book. I was just let down on so many levels by this book and had to apologize to my book club. Thankfully this is something all of us do often so it wasn't a new occurrence.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Birchwood Manor, Diamond, Fairy Queen, For the Love of Book Clubs, Kate Morton, Magenta Brotherhood, Pre-Raphaelite, Radcliffe Blue, Stephen King, The Clockmaker's Daughter, The Secret Keeper, Trunk Book

The Death of Mrs. Westaway by Ruth Ware
Published by: Gallery/Scout Press
Publication Date: May 29th, 2018
Format: Hardcover, 384 Pages
Rating: ★★
To Buy

Hal is destitute. She has been eking out a living reading Tarot cards for the punters on Brighton Beach but she's nowhere near as good as her mother Maggie was at this. But Maggie died tragically before Hal's eighteenth birthday and Hal had to take out some loans from some disreputable people and they won't let her forget that. Even if she's paid it all back, with interest. Then a letter arrives that could change everything. Hal has somehow been "identified" as the granddaughter of a Mrs. Westaway and stands to inherit, well, something. Really, anything would be fine. Only, Hal knows this woman couldn't possibly be her grandmother. Her whole family was Maggie and Maggie is gone. But what's the harm in getting out of town for a few days and seeing if she can convince the family that she's a Westaway long enough for her to make off with a few hundred pounds. Just enough to help ease her situation. Maybe relocate away from Brighton? It's not like she'd be taking advantage of them, they're probably wealthy and what's a few hundred pounds to them when to her it could change her life? The only problem is she hasn't been left a few hundred pounds, she's been left everything. Knowing that she isn't the missing granddaughter Mrs. Westaway was looking for Hal is ready to pack it all in until she is given a picture. A picture that proves that her mother knew the Westaway siblings. Could she really be related to Mrs. Westaway? Could the inheritance be rightfully hers by some quirk of fate? But the grand estate of Trepassen has many secrets. Maggie came to Trepassen an innocent and ended up pregnant with Hal. Unwilling to divulge the name of Hal's father, whom Hal was always told was a one-night stand, Maggie was locked away in the attic. She was in fact locked up in the same room that Maggie is staying in. That can't be a coincidence. What was the reason Maggie never returned to Trepassen and does that put Hal in danger now?

Tarot cards, check. Mysterious letter bequeathing an inheritance, check. Stately, if slightly run down, manor house, check. Right there are the official bullet points that made me sit up and take notice of The Death of Mrs. Westaway. Well, that and the fact that it kept being compared to Daphne Du Maurier, a trap I fall for way too often. She is without equal and I need to keep reminding myself of that. But while none of those bullet points are wrong, they are also very misleading. This book isn't the least bit charming or Gothic, it's prosaic. Hal barely makes a living reading Tarot cards for the tourists. She gets a letter about an inheritance that she's sure is mistaken while obviously it's not. But she assumes she can pull off the con because she's so good at reading people. It's like a boring heist but with snow. I'm sorry, but if you're going to go for the grab bag of Gothic goodies could something have been at least slightly menacing? Even throwing Hal up into the creepy neither regions of the house elicited barely a shudder from me. What's more is that I figured out everything too easily. I'm not saying I'm a savant when it comes to crime solving, but I am knowledgeable enough that if you're a writer who isn't very good at disguising your clues, leaving them a little too open to the elements, well, I'll pounce on them like a cat on catnip. I had the killer down within five minutes of them appearing on the scene. What's more, I was able to pick out the motive way too easily. There are some "tricks" that work only in literature because there's wiggle room for mistaken identities that aren't there in a visual medium. The most successful use I've seen of this in recent years was in Kate Morton's The Secret Keeper. She nailed it. This, this doesn't nail it. What's also annoying is that during the reveal there is a major blunder. Hal's mother Maggie is trying to escape a dangerous situation in a flashback and runs out onto the iced over lake. In July. Yes, watch out for that dangerous July ice everyone. And there's no way it could have been a mistake because the whole scene is set in summer and there's flowers and a picnic and ICE! Yeah... just... whatever. In fact, whatever is kind of my general feeling for this book overall. I was entertained but that was all.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Brighton, Cornwall, Country House, Daphne Du Maurier, Going Gothic, Gothic, Inheritance, Kate Morton, Loan Shark, Money, Murder, Ruth Ware, Tarot, The Death of Mrs. Westaway, The Secret Keeper, Trepassen, Whodunit

The Distant Hours by Kate Morton
Published by: Atria
Publication Date: November 9th, 2010
Format: Hardcover, 576 Pages
Rating: ★★
To Buy

Edie Burchill has never had much of a connection with her mother, Meredith. They don't have a special bond or share the deepest secrets of their lives, in fact Edie hasn't told her mom yet that she and Jamie have split up months previously. Therefore it shouldn't come as a surprise that her mom has kept secrets from her as well. One of those secrets is that she was evacuated to Milderhurst Castle during WWII. There she was looked after by the Blythe sisters, the twins, Percy and Saffy, and their much younger sister Juniper, who was like a sister to Meredith. A long lost letter brings this one revelation of Meredith's past out into the open and Edie can't help but be fascinated.

After visiting a prospective author for the publishing company she works for, Edie gets lost on her way home and stumbles on Milderhurst Castle. It seems as if fate has brought her to these gates all these years after her mother entered them. She soon learns that all the sisters are still in residence, older, and in Juniper's case, insane. Juniper lost her mind the night her fiance jilted her in 1941. Edie also learns that the sisters are the daughters of Raymond Blythe, the author of The True History of the Mud Man, a classic and Edie's favorite book growing up. Astounded by all these coincidences Edie ventures into Milderhurst, not telling the siblings that she is Meredith's daughter. The secrets of the past start to unravel with Edie's arrival and the time has come for the truth to be told, especially about what really happened that stormy night in 1941.

I have come to the conclusion that Kate Morton is a writer that I love in theory but not in practice. I see these big doorstop novels about secrets and lies, where the truth about the past is teased out and revealed to us in the present and think, yes please, I'd like to read that. But expectation and reality have never met in this case of all of Morton's books save one, I did begrudgingly like The Secret Keeper to an extent. The problem is I keep thinking about what might have been, how things might have twisted and turned to make a tauter story, one that didn't leave me thinking a couple of hundred pages in why exactly was it that I picked up this book in the first place and then heroically pushing on to the finish. A finish that I have long ago seen coming.

My main problem I think is that all Morton's books seem to be slightly different stories told with the same building blocks. Older person who may be dying has secret that will change younger person's outlook on life. Commence the lugubrious ferreting out of the truth that has a fifty fifty chance of being hidden in a children's book and will definitely have a nice house in it, even if at this present time it's gone to rack and ruin. Peeling wallpaper, forgotten childhood memories, love where you least expect it. Sound familiar? It should if you've read any of Morton's books. Yes, the books tap into a common zeitgeist of wanting to look into our past and our ancestry to find answers to our lives, but there's only so many ways to tell this story and unless Morton starts to radically change her tune she will be stuck in this rut forever. I can oddly see her writing a book about her own predicament in fact...

Aside from constantly rewriting the same story in different ways The Distant Hours suffers not from comparison to Morton's other works but by the sheer bleakness of the story. This is not a happy story folks. This story will leave you a sad sack just thinking about wasted opportunities and how potential can just wither and die on the vine. Those poor Blythe sisters! I wonder if Morton set out to see just how Brontësque she could make her book with lost loves and ravaging fires and didn't pull back from the manuscript at any time and think, hey, maybe I should temper this Emily vibe I've got going with a little Charlotte? So while this book is Brontës to the max, it's just too depressing. Therefore, unless you've some masochistic desire to wallow in despair, just let me slap this book out of your hands right now.

Though in fairness, it isn't all unremitting horror and despair. We have Edie to counter that. Edie, the idiot. First I want to do a mini rant on the avatar of the reader in a book, so bare with. As readers, there is usually someone we connect to, someone who is our conduit into the narrative. A hero, heroine, antihero, whomever it is, it's someone to be our guide. Now the guide can be a little guileless, because, like them, we are coming into the story for the first time. We are just as clueless as they are, unless they are messing with us in the "unreliable narrator" trope, but that's a different kettle of fish. You, as the writer, want us, the reader, to be able to connect with your narrator and with your story. One way to guarantee that this will never happen is to have a self amused imbecile as our avatar. Writing her thoughts in a cutesy self referential way all the while showing herself to have a cranium full of nothing.

In fact, Edie's brainpan might be filled with less then nothing. Her head is a vacuum that sucks in information that promptly disappears forever. She is oblivious of the world around her. She has a totally unrealistic and fantastical job that only the true idiot heroine can get because she couldn't survive in the real world. Blindingly obvious deductions come as revelations to her hundreds of pages too late. And of course those hundreds of pages are filled with nothing but deathly boring prologue to the events of the evening of October 29th, 1941.

If it wasn't so obvious that Edie was an idiot I'd put down her lack of deductive reasoning to the plodding pace of the narrative, maybe she just fell asleep? In fact, sleeping might have been a better use of my time. As I finish my rant there's just so much in my brain that I want to scream at Morton, show don't tell, Mud Man, ugh, just no. Too many thoughts verses Edie's too few. But the final nail in the stupidity coffin for me was that somehow Edie got her hands on a first edition of Jane Eyre, retail about $50,000, and what does she do with this sacred book? She takes it on a coffee date!?! Excuse me!?! She did what? There's not hope for her. No more. Begone foul spirit!

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 2 comments  

Labels: Blythe Sisters, Bronte, Charlotte Bronte, Downton Denial, Emily Bronte, Idiot, Jane Eyre, Kate Morton, Milderhurst Castle, The Distant Hours, The Secret Keeper, The True History of the Mud Man, WWII

The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton
Published by: Atria
Publication Date: October 16th, 2012
Format: Hardcover, 480 Pages
Rating: ★★★
To Buy

When Laurel was a young girl she witnessed her mother kill a man. After that night they never spoke of it ever again. The crime was hushed up by the local police and other then herself and her parents, the rest of the family never knew what happened, especially to the special knife used to cut all the birthday cakes. Now fifty years have passed and Laurel's mom Dorothy is dying. Laurel has spent most of her life not thinking about that day. Shortly after the incident she moved away and has rarely been home since. With time running out, Laurel realizes that she can not let her mother go without finding out why the crime happened.

The answer goes further back then that day Laurel hide in the tree house, it goes back to London during the Blitz. Dorothy was a young girl with big plans for her and her boyfriend Jimmy. She could just see them now, at all the glitzy parties with all the chosen people, all the bright young things. Dorothy wasn't going to be a domestic all her life. Wasn't the fact that she had become friends with the wonderful and glamorous Vivien a sign that she was destined for greater things? Though nothing is as it seems sometimes. Dorothy was desperate to get the life she wanted, so desperate that she might do something stupid. Something that might echo down the ages till a "stranger" wanders up a garden path and dies with a knife buried in his gut.

I remember picking up my first Kate Morton book at Borders one day, it was a copy of The Forgotten Garden. Years later I finally read it and while I wanted to love it, with so much potential as to where the plot could have gone, I was a bit disappointed. Yet there was a part of me dying to give Kate Morton another chance. On a dark and stormy night in October I drove to Oconomowoc to see Kate Morton give a talk on her newest book, The Secret Keeper. She was a delight talking in her melodious voice about peeling wallpaper and everything else she loves. I had actually not read anything about her new book and was delighted to find out that a large portion of it took place during the Blitz. While the Blitz must have been one of the most horrific things to live through, it has a romanticism that draws me. It was a time when life lost it's routine. The world was on hold till one side lost. During this time what life you had was intensified. You seized anything you could and didn't let go. I often wonder if we will ever see an event that could have the same impact, but I know it's unlikely. Thousands of people euthanized their pets because they knew of the danger they would be in and also because of rationing... which makes me question a bit why Kate's new book had a few too many pets... research error or food for later...

Sitting in the little armchair with her perfectly cut hair and lovely boots, Kate read the opening chapter. I have a tendency to not be good at public speaking events, after a few minutes I really start to zone out, but Kate had me just transfixed. While I wanted to listen to the rest of her talk and her question and answer session, there was a part of me that just wanted to sit there in that auditorium and keep reading. I wanted to blot out the rest of the world and make this book my everything. One reason I desired an escape from the world was I was in the midst of my worst semester ever and I longed to lose myself. Another reason was that the book I was reading by Mary Roach was non-fiction and not that much of an escape. Also, there are so many other books I want to read at a given time that sometimes picking my new book over an old book makes it feel like the new book is jumping the queue. So I waited. Then one day before spring break I couldn't take it anymore and just had to pick the book up. I devoured it in four days.

I was grateful that this book didn't have the ambition of The Forgotten Garden. Now, this isn't a slight on the book, it just had a simpler question at it's core. Therefore I had a clear through line to follow. I could see, if partially obscured, what followed what and I didn't go off in flights of fancy imagining killings like Jack the Ripper and dark abuse and murder... all of which happened in reading The Forgotten Garden. Instead I had a wonderful time with three characters. Laurel, I couldn't care less about, but Jimmy, Dorothy and Vivien were so alive and so distinct and fully formed they became my life for a few days. Yet what I loved the most is the twist, turn, secret, whatever you want to call it, was a wonderful surprise that could only be done in a book. The contrivance would never work in any other medium, and it's the characters and their behavior that make the twist not only possible, but fully believable. Now, while I will say that I saw the twist coming, it was because of Kate's writing that, although the end was in view, I couldn't tear myself away from the book. I was glad I gave Kate another chance, and I have a feeling I'll be picking up another one of her books in the near future.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 2 comments  

Labels: Books, Jack the Ripper, Kate Morton, Mary Roach, Murder, Oconomowoc, The Blitz, The Forgotten Garden, The Secret Keeper, WWII

Death in the Floating City by Tasha Alexander
Published by: Minotaur
Publication Date: October 16th, 2012
Format: Hardcover, 320 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"Years ago, Emily's childhood nemesis, Emma Callum, scandalized polite society when she eloped to Venice with an Italian count. But now her father-in-law lies murdered, and her husband has vanished. There's no one Emma can turn to for help but Emily, who leaves at once with her husband, the dashing Colin Hargreaves, for Venice. There, her investigations take her from opulent palazzi to slums, libraries, and bordellos. Emily soon realizes that to solve the present day crime, she must first unravel a centuries old puzzle. But the past does not give up its secrets easily, especially when these revelations might threaten the interests of some very powerful people."

Oh, new Lady Emily! Also, answers to some questions and how jealous am I that Tasha wrote this book in Venice? Very!

The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton
Published by: Atria
Publication Date: October 16th, 2012
Format: Hardcover, 480 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"The new novel from the New York Times and internationally bestselling author of The Distant Hours is a spellbinding mix of mystery, thievery, murder, and enduring love.

During a party at the family farm in the English countryside, sixteen-year-old Laurel Nicolson has escaped to her childhood tree house and is dreaming of the future. She spies a stranger coming up the road and sees her mother speak to him. Before the afternoon is over, Laurel will witness a shocking crime that challenges everything she knows about her family and especially her mother, Dorothy.

Now, fifty years later, Laurel is a successful and well-regarded actress, living in London. She returns to the family farm for Dorothy’s ninetieth birthday and finds herself overwhelmed by questions she has not thought about for decades. From pre-WWII England through the Blitz, to the fifties and beyond, discover the secret history of three strangers from vastly different worlds—Dorothy, Vivien, and Jimmy—who meet by chance in wartime London and whose lives are forever entwined.

The Secret Keeper explores longings and dreams, the lengths people go to fulfill them, and the consequences they can have. It is a story of lovers, friends, dreamers, and schemers told—in Morton’s signature style—against a backdrop of events that changed the world."

I am insanely excited for this book, not just because I enjoyed The Forgotten Garden, but because I'm going to a "tea with the author" event in Milwaukee for this book. Woo and a hoo!

Father Gaetano's Puppet Catechism: A Novella by Christopher Golden and Mike Mignola
Published by: St. Martin's Press
Publication Date: October 16th, 2012
Format: Hardcover, 136 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"From the creator of Hellboy, an illustrated novella that brings Twilight Zone originality to the written page

In the aftermath of a critical World War II battle, Father Gaetano is assigned as the sole priest at the Church of San Domenico in the small, seaside Sicilian village of Tringale. The previous pastor has died and there is a shortage of clergy at the moment, so until another can be spared, the young priest must say all of the masses himself.

Mass is not Father Gaetano’s only responsibility, however. The war has created many orphans, and thus the San Domenico rectory has been converted into an orphanage which is also his domain. The children are a joy to him, but they have lost so much, and many have begun to question their faith and their God, and his attempts to teach them catechism are in vain . . . until he finds an old puppet theatre and an ornate box of puppets in the basement. Handcrafted by the building's former caretaker, now absent, the puppets seem the perfect tool to get the children to pay attention to their lessons. But after dark the puppets emerge from that ornate box, without their strings. While the children have been questioning their faith, the puppets believe Father Gaetano's Bible stories completely. But there is such a thing as too much faith. And the children's lives will never be the same again."

I've been a fan of these two great men collaborating for some time now! Check this one out.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Christopher Golden, Death in the Floating City, Father Gaetano's Puppet Catechism, Kate Morton, Mike Mignola, Tasha Alexander, The Secret Keeper