The House at Riverton - Kate Morton

There may be an impression growing that I'm just an old moaner, a latter day Statler or Waldorf, (for Muppets fans) who takes pleasure in growling about everything he discovers. Not true, and just to prove it, let me introduce you to Kate Morton.

Kate is a young Australian author who has the world at her feet. Her book, "The House at Riverton", known elsewhere as "The Shifting Fog" is a best seller, has been acclaimed in various countries and the rights to the book have been sold in various others. Anyone who is interested in learning more can link to her website here.

Unlike the last book I reviewed, this is not a thriller, not even a whodunnit, more of a "what happened?" Set in Essex, England in two periods nearly 80 years apart, it is an engrossing, charming and intriguing novel that plots a significant part of the life of Grace Bradley, at one time a lady's maid in the house of the title. Something momentous happened there. we don't know what, we don't know why and we don't know to whom. We do know it was significant enough for a film to be made about it in the late 1990's, but throughout the book we follow the story, getting tantalising glimpses and warnings about the murky past that has yet to be revealed.

We have to wait until the very end for the full import of all that has happened to emerge. The butterfly wings of seemingly trivial events in history have their full and momentous impact later with tragic consequences. The book deals with love, lust and deception, with tragedy and loss and with cataclysmic events of the First World War in a seemingly gentle way that lures the reader on and entices one deeper into the families and their various secrets. For they all have them and sometimes die in ignorance of them.

This book is subtle, sensitive and evocative. It is extremely well written and I cannot recommend it highly enough. I am fond of picking up quotes from books, and of copying particular passages that have caught my eye. The following is typical, and is in Grace's words as she nears death,

"I am beginning to die. Nobody has told me, but I see it in their faces. The pleasant, soft expressions, the sad, smiling eyes, the kind whispers and glances that pass between them. And I feel it myself.

"A quickening.

"I am slipping out of time. The demarcations I've observed for a lifetime are suddenly meaningless: seconds, minutes, hours, days. Mere words. All I have are moments."

I don't have Kate Norton's permission to print that little extract, but I hope she sees it for what it is. Admiration from one who wishes he had the skill, style and imagination to write novels like The House at Riverton. For me it's a superbly written tale that will last in my memory for a long time to come.

Split Second - David Baldacci

I'm quite a fan of David Baldacci. He creates carefully crafted thrillers with a distinct political edge to them, novels that are set around the high politics of the US, that usually create fairly plausible political dilemmas and then set out to resolve them in a dramatic way.

So I have to ask - What happened with Split Second? If I were trying to sell this book I would probably talk about a plot that twists and turns so that the reader is kept guessing up to the last minute. All of which is true. But the problem is that sometimes the writer's intention to keep the reader guessing is so transparent that it gets in the way of a good story. It's too complicated, with too many red herrings and false trails and too many references to people whose identity is being concealed from the reader none too artfully. A book of this sort, from an author of the calibre of David Baldacci, shouldn't have characters like, "Buick Man" and "Officer Simmons", and shouldn't have so many occasions when we are left to guess at the flashes of inspiration that sent our hero off in a different direction, that direction also being shrouded in mystery.

So, by the time I reached the classic Baldacci finale, I just wanted to get to the end of the book. And that spoiled it for me. In summary, the plot was just too complicated and artificial, spoiling the overall effect. Had this been my first Baldacci, I might not have been tempted to read more. Luckily it wasn't, and so I'll read on.

You may feel differently. Please comment here if you do. In the meantime I'm giving this particular read 6/10.

Where Have I Been?

All over the place, basically, both figuratively and literally. I've not been posting here because I wasn't at home for part of the time, and was trying to get my head round my life for the rest of the time. None of which is of the slightest interest to anyone who might chance across this, so I won't bore you with the details. But now I'm back, and branching out a bit, so the next post, (which, bizarrely, will appear before this one) will be about one of my abiding interests, reading. I do a lot of reading and though I would put my impressions in print. If you want to chat about any book I've read, here's the place to do it. How will you know what I've read? Look at the titles of the posts.