A four-year-old girl abandoned aboard a ship touches off a
century-long inquiry into her ancestry, in Morton's weighty, at
times unwieldy, second novel (The House at Riverton<\i>,
2008).In 1913, Hugh, portmaster of Maryborough, Australia,
discovers a child alone on a vessel newly arrived from England. The
little girl cannot recall her name and has no identification, only
a white suitcase containing some clothes and a book of fairy tales
by Eliza Makepeace. Hugh and his wife, childless after several
miscarriages, name the girl Nell and raise her as their own. At 21,
she is engaged to be married and has no idea she is not their
biological daughter. When Hugh confesses the truth, Nell's
equilibrium is destroyed, but life and World War II intervene, and
she doesn't explore her true origins until 1975, when she journeys
to London. There she learns of Eliza's sickly cousin Rose, daughter
of Lord Linus Mountrachet and his lowborn, tightly wound wife, Lady
Adeline. Mountrachet's beloved sister Georgiana disgraced the
family by running off to London to live in squalor with a sailor,
who then abruptly disappeared. Eliza was their daughter, reclaimed
by Linus after Georgiana's death and brought back to Blackhurst,
the gloomy Mountrachet manor in Cornwall. Interviewing secretive
locals at Blackhurst, now under renovation as a hotel, Nell traces
her parentage to Rose and her husband, society portraitist
Nathaniel Walker - except that their only daughter died at age
four. Nell's quest is interrupted at this point, but after her
death in 2005, her granddaughter Cassandra takes it up. Intricate,
intersecting narratives, heavy-handed fairy-tale symbolism and a
giant red herring suggesting possible incest create a thicket of
clues as impenetrable and treacherous as Eliza's overgrown garden
and the twisty maze on the Mountrachet estate.Murky, but the puzzle
is pleasing and the long-delayed "reveal" is a genuine surprise.
(Kirkus Reviews)
A moving and powerful mystery, The Forgotten Garden is the
bestselling second novel from author of The House at Riverton, Kate
Morton. 1913 On the eve of the First World War, a little girl is
found abandoned after a gruelling ocean voyage from England to
Australia. All she can remember of the journey is that a mysterious
woman she calls the Authoress had promised to look after her. But
the Authoress has vanished without a trace. 1975 Now an old lady,
Nell travels to England to discover the truth about her parentage.
Her quest leads her to Cornwall, and to a beautiful estate called
Blackhurst Manor, which had been owned by the Mountrachet family.
What has prompted Nell's journey after all these years? 2005 On
Nell's death, her granddaughter, Cassandra, comes into a surprise
inheritance. Cliff Cottage, in the grounds of Blackhurst Manor, is
notorious amongst the locals for the secrets it holds - secrets
about the doomed Mountrachet family. But it is at Cliff Cottage,
abandoned for years, and in its forgotten garden, that Cassandra
will uncover the truth about the family and why the young Nell was
abandoned all those decades before.
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