Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I was a bit hesitant in picking up "The Forgotten Garden" by Kate Morton. After my disappointment with "The House at Riverton," I wasn't sure if I was willing to invest more time. Pleased to say that the story hooked me from the get-go, and though the book is longer than I thought necessary, it was altogether an entertaining read. At the heart of this big, fat tale (645 pages) is a mystery. In 1913, a dock master, Hugh, discovers a four-year-old girl who's been left alone on a wharf in Queensland, Australia after all passengers had disembarked from a boat that sailed from England. Taking pity on her, Hugh takes her home to his wife, Lil. In spite of Hugh's and Lil's efforts to find the girl's family, time passes and no one claims the tyke. Having hit her head while onboard the boat, the little girl couldn't even remember her own name and all she could recall was a woman she calls the Authoress who was supposed to sail with her. Hugh and Lil decide to keep her as their own and name her Nell. In the present day, Nell's granddaughter, Cassandra, is grieving Nell's passing. As she goes through Nell's notebooks, she realizes that her grandmother had never stopped searching for her true parents. Cassie takes over the search, which leads her to England and to a small Cornish village, and finally, to a decrepit cottage and its walled garden...a garden that swallowed the secrets of the 1900s and buried within its grounds the fascinating and tragic story of the Mountrachets and the woman a child had called the Authoress. A challenge to the reader will be the constant switching of perspective from past to present and in between, primarily the years of 1913, 1975 and 2005. It's a bit off-putting in the first few chapters but after awhile, it's no longer an encumbrance. Though the main story is Nell's parentage, the novel is dense with stories of the characters whose lives intersect and create the environment upon which Nell's birth and subsequent abandonment hinges. There are also many incidental details that don't necessarily impact the story but are included nevertheless to bring alive the era being depicted and add realism to the backstories. Included, too, are fairy tales by the Authoress that serve as allegories of the truths secreted by the doomed Mountrachet family, a family that "wanted things they shouldn't or couldn't have" and destroyed lives with their avarice, entitlements and perversions. It can be a grueling read at close to 700 pages but the mystery itself kept me reading and speculating. Clues are parceled out in small doses and it takes a very long time, almost the end, before one can put together a clear picture of Nell's history. That's a good decision on the author's part as otherwise, a reader's interest would likely wane quickly. As Cassie puts it, "the closer we get, the more tangled the web becomes." The characters are, for the most part, very interesting, though a bit on the melodramatic side, but it's the kind of melodrama that befits the Victorian era and the early 1900s. Of particular note is the emerging technology of x-ray in the mid-1890s, the careless use of which put into motion a series of tragic events that would reverberate for over 100 years. It's an enthralling read and, with patience from a reader, delivers very satisfactory answers. Stories about foundlings, secrets and Victorian women have been done hundreds of times in various iterations and can get tiresome fast if the core story is weak. Glad to say that no such error is committed in "The Forgotten Garden." The first few chapters pulled me in very quickly and I found myself compulsively on the same quest for the truth. The mystery has sturdy legs that don't weaken for the novel's entire duration.