The Book Club Review
The Distant Hours by Kate Morton
Kate Morton is a thirty something Australian writer. She is best
known for The House at Riverton and the Book Club first
encountered her with The Forgotten Garden in 2010. Most
members were mildly enthusiastic when another of her titles now
appeared out of our leader’s book basket.
There were some immediate similarities with the book we had
previously read – an event many years ago which had
consequences for subsequent generations, and a modern-day
descendant stumbling into the story trying to piece together
what actually happened. In this case we started off with an
extract from what sounds like a fairy-tale story in a mystical castle
written by a Raymond Blythe. We then switch to 1992 when Edie,
the female protagonist, observes her mother shocked and
surprised by a letter she receives, a little late in delivery, some fifty
years in fact! It had originally been written during the last war, by
a girl in a mansion in deepest Kent to which her mother had
been evacuated during the blitz. Edie discovers that the mansion
and the above mentioned mystery castle are Milderhurst, one
and the same, and takes the opportunity to visit the castle
incognito, and meet the surviving Blythes who live there.
This all takes us a hundred or so pages and then we have the
back stories of these people in the castle, from the 1950s, as the
narrative. I had been extremely impressed by the author’s
command of language and her ability to convey atmosphere,
suspense and even menace. A small example: “Her silence was
excruciating and I was aware suddenly of the murmur of café
noise around us, the jarring thwack of the coffee basket being
emptied, the grinder whirring, shrill laughter somewhere on the
mezzanine. I seemed to be hearing it all at one remove…”.
As your trusted (?) reviewer, I am ashamed to admit that at
about this stage I lost the will to continue with the book, and so
have no idea what happened next. I couldn’t face another few
hundred pages of what seemed to me an insubstantial and over
drawn-out plot. I knew I would also be missing the meeting at
which this book would be discussed.
However I can report that many members of the group had
enjoyed the book. They also found it well-written, but they
experienced a story that intrigued them at many layers. In
particular they found the characters most believable, and had
no difficulties relating to their situations or the behaviours that
ensued. It was noted that the book contained multiple themes,
and this was also appreciated. Another word used of the book
was “layered”. However I was not alone in feeling the book was
over long for its subject matter, and others commented: “got
bogged down in the middle..”, “it could lose 150
pages”….”frustratingly long”.
So it seems this is indeed a book that can repay your time if you
have that time to spend. The score was interesting – almost
exactly at the mid point of our range of book scores, and virtually
identical (to the decimal point) with the score we accorded her
earlier book which we had read five years earlier!
Page Turner
Next Month: The Ice-Cream Girls by Dorothy Koomson