Helpful Score: 6
This is a great book to transport you to another time. You will wish you could speak to the characters yourself! Anyone who loves a good character study book will enjoy this.
Helpful Score: 6
Wow! I couldn't put this book down. It's exciting to the very end. I'm sure it will be made into a screenplay one day. I really enjoy the way Kate Morton writes. By the end of the book, you know the main characters well and get a glimpse of life as it is through their eyes. The Forgotten Garden is just as riveting; a story you won't easily forget.
Helpful Score: 6
This book tells the tragic story of a grand English family through the eyes and ears of one of their servants, Grace. The book opens when Grace, age 98, is contacted by a woman who is in the process of making a movie that will depict the history of the House at Riverton. Grace is asked to be a consultant on the movie based on her experiences with the family and the house. While visiting the studio sets for the film, long hidden memories are awakened in Grace, who later decides she must record those memories for the benefit of her grandson, Marcus.
This story of the House at Riverton begins in 1914 when a 14 year-old Grace hires on as a servant girl in the house. She soon meets the Hartford children, who are all about the same age as Grace, and she is immediately smitten with them. All the children grow older as the country enters into WWI, which takes an immeasurable toll on the family. As the Hartford girls go on to make their debut into society they wrestle with the new post-war attitudes and expectations of what it means to be a modern woman verses what has traditionally been a woman's role in society. The entire Hartford family history leads up to a very mysterious, very public tragedy that gradually comes into focus as the story fleshes out.
In the book, Grace's memories of the Hartford family are interspersed with glimpses of Grace's life since her time in service to the Hartford family and her present day life as an elderly lady in a nursing facility. The reader is drawn back and forth between the present and the past, constantly discovering little pieces of the puzzle, sometimes in the past and sometimes in the present; a convention that keeps the story fresh and alive throughout the book. Ms. Morton has done a wonderful job not only of representing the early 20th century in both events and social attitudes, but also in creating a truly believable cast of characters with which to populate her creation.
This story of the House at Riverton begins in 1914 when a 14 year-old Grace hires on as a servant girl in the house. She soon meets the Hartford children, who are all about the same age as Grace, and she is immediately smitten with them. All the children grow older as the country enters into WWI, which takes an immeasurable toll on the family. As the Hartford girls go on to make their debut into society they wrestle with the new post-war attitudes and expectations of what it means to be a modern woman verses what has traditionally been a woman's role in society. The entire Hartford family history leads up to a very mysterious, very public tragedy that gradually comes into focus as the story fleshes out.
In the book, Grace's memories of the Hartford family are interspersed with glimpses of Grace's life since her time in service to the Hartford family and her present day life as an elderly lady in a nursing facility. The reader is drawn back and forth between the present and the past, constantly discovering little pieces of the puzzle, sometimes in the past and sometimes in the present; a convention that keeps the story fresh and alive throughout the book. Ms. Morton has done a wonderful job not only of representing the early 20th century in both events and social attitudes, but also in creating a truly believable cast of characters with which to populate her creation.
Helpful Score: 4
This was such an incredibly haunting and heartbreaking book. You know from the very beginning that some unspeakable tragedy has occurred in the lives of the Hartford family, and you spend the rest of the book watching it all unfold.
'The House at Riverton' was a perfect blend of two other books. The style, tone, and structure of 'Riverton' reminded me very much of Diane Setterfield's 'The Thirteenth Tale.' The incredibly realistic descriptions and insights into the life of a professional serving staff was on par with Kazo Ishiguro's 'The Remains of the Day.'
The best summary I can give of what this book contains is a quote from the Author's Note. Morton states that the concept of 'Riverton' appealed to her because it was able to ..."utilize tropes of the literary gothic; the haunting of the present by the past; the insistence of family secrets; return of the repressed; the centrality of inheritance (material, psychological, and physical); haunted houses (particularly haunting of a metaphysical nature); suspicion concerning new technology and changing methods; the entrapment of women (whether physical or social) and associated claustrophobia; character doubling; the unreliability of memory and the partial nature of history; mysteries and the unseen; confessional narrative; and embedded texts."
The story is incredibly compelling and it will leave you guessing about the real truth of events until the very last pages. It stays with you even after you finish it just as much for the things that it reveals as for the things it leaves unspoken. This is a masterful debut novel and I highly recommend it.
'The House at Riverton' was a perfect blend of two other books. The style, tone, and structure of 'Riverton' reminded me very much of Diane Setterfield's 'The Thirteenth Tale.' The incredibly realistic descriptions and insights into the life of a professional serving staff was on par with Kazo Ishiguro's 'The Remains of the Day.'
The best summary I can give of what this book contains is a quote from the Author's Note. Morton states that the concept of 'Riverton' appealed to her because it was able to ..."utilize tropes of the literary gothic; the haunting of the present by the past; the insistence of family secrets; return of the repressed; the centrality of inheritance (material, psychological, and physical); haunted houses (particularly haunting of a metaphysical nature); suspicion concerning new technology and changing methods; the entrapment of women (whether physical or social) and associated claustrophobia; character doubling; the unreliability of memory and the partial nature of history; mysteries and the unseen; confessional narrative; and embedded texts."
The story is incredibly compelling and it will leave you guessing about the real truth of events until the very last pages. It stays with you even after you finish it just as much for the things that it reveals as for the things it leaves unspoken. This is a masterful debut novel and I highly recommend it.
Helpful Score: 2
At the beginning of The House at Riverton I needlessly worried that it would be persistently hinting at the dark secret to be revealed ahead. Instead I found myself pleasantly immersed in both timelines. Grace, a nursing home resident, begins to relive old memories when contacted by a filmmaker about a project at Riverton Manor where she once worked in domestic service. Although the film is about the suicide of poet R.S. Hunter witnessed by the two Hartford sisters of the estate during a grand society party, the past timeline actually chronicles Grace's time in service, a bygone era where duty and service held deep meaning for those downstairs. It is also a story of how war--the Great War--traumatizes even those who return. Morton does an admirable job weaving the present timeline with the past, creating strong female characters, and presenting the deep dark secret with impact. A recommended read if you wish to visit early twentieth century England.
