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A lost child. On the eve of the first world war, a little girl is found abandoned on a ship to Australia. A mysterious woman called the Authoress had promised to look after her but the Authoress has disappeared without a trace. A terrible secret. On the night of her twenty-first birthday, Nell O'Connor learns a secret that will change her life forever. Decades later, she embarks upon a search for the truth that leads her to the windswept Cornish coast and the strange and beautiful Blackhurst Manor, once owned by the aristocratic Mountrachet family. A mysterious inheritance. On Nell's death, her grand-daughter, Cassandra, comes into an unexpected inheritance. Cliff Cottage and its forgotten garden are notorious amongst the Cornish locals for the secrets they hold - secrets about the doomed Mountrachet family and their ward Eliza Makepeace, a writer of dark Victorian fairytales. It is here that Cassandra will finally uncover the truth about the family, and solve the century-old mystery of a little girl lost.… (more)
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Morton's ability to draw the reader into the different lives and then connect all the pieces is amazing. Definitely one of my favorites!
The novel starts with four-year-old Nell, stranded on a wharf in Australia.
The novel takes its readers through multiple generations - the Victorian lives of Rose and Eliza (who are Nell's ancestors), the 1975 quest by Nell to learn more about her family and the 2005 journey by Cassandra to England to pick up where Nell left off. Morton masterfully maneuvers through each time period, slowly unveiling clues to the secrets of Nell and Cassandra's ancestry. Where Morton shines is in her character development, even making a 200-year-old cottage a character of its own. Without a doubt, The Forgotten Garden is a classic Gothic novel, and if you love that genre, you'll enjoy this book.
My only complaint was the overabundance of detail in the story. Morton is talented enough to tell a story without the minutia, and I think about 20 percent of this novel could have been trimmed. Admittedly, it's a small qualm and does not stop me from recommending The Forgotten Garden to other readers. But if you're an impatient reader (like me), consider yourself warned.
With that said, Kate Morton continues her storytelling mastery, and I look forward to reading her third book, The Distant Hours, very soon.
As I started The Forgotten Garden, I wasn't sure if I would like it or not. A little before halfway through, I had to force myself to stop reading
The mysteries unfolded in the last fourth of the book. And they unfolded slowly, not overwhelming you, but just at the right pace for you to digest them and you'd say, "Oh!"
I can't wait to devour Morton's next book. It can't come soon enough.
Cassandra is young widow who lost a young son along with her husband and has been stuck in the grieving process for 10 years.
The narrative weaves back and forth in time from the early 1900's to 1975 and to 2005 as we learn about Nell's the circumstances of Nell's parents, Nell's experience in her visit to Cornwall, and finally Cassandra's unraveling of the mystery in 2005.
It's reasonably good story line. At times the writing becomes a bit too flowery. Some of that could have been edited down to make the book closer to 350 pages, IMO.
Not for me. I forced myself through the first hundred pages and abandoned.
All the mysteries and secrets of the Mountrachet family are revealed....the ending is superb.
The story goes back and forth in time telling the story of how little Nell was put on a boat to
The book tells of the generations before and after Nell. It is masterfully written...you don't want to put it down until you find out who Nell really is and until you find all the secrets about how she arrived on the boat and in Australia and the significance of the forgotten garden....the garden plays a huge part in the unraveling of the secrets and mysteries in the book.
I usually don't re-read books, but I would re-read this just to be sure I "got" all the facts straight...it was just fantastic....the story was very clever and the characters unforgettable....I didn't want the book to end.
Kat Morton’s characters are delightfully believable and flawed. The selfless mother and beloved child, the fiercely honest father, loving sisters, wandering daughter, the grandchild loved and rejected and wounded and alone… And elsewhere the family that struggles to disguise its secret hurts and lies and histories…
Nell’s world is shattered the day she learns she’s adopted. She longs to find the family who abandoned her, to recover her self-worth. One thread of the story follows Nell’s search from Australia to London to Cornwall, but in another time it’s Nell’s granddaughter Cassandra who’s taken up the quest. All roads lead to secrets like flowers in a garden, beautifully planted and waiting for a gardener to help them grow. And the mysterious Authoress looms at the end of the maze, an indefinable figure of threat or of hope.
This story enthralled me. Even as I began to guess the past I would find it slipping from my grasp, and I had to turn the page. The author keeps the different storylines perfectly separated and beautifully balanced. She fills in the characters, flaws and all, turning them into friends the reader follows eagerly. And she draws it in to a beautiful conclusion where all is exposed and revealed.
The Forgotten Garden is a rare treat of a book and a masterful example of multiple storylines and timelines perfectly told, a powerful and beautiful tale.
Nell is a foundling, and what a rare foundling she is. A stow-away on an ocean liner, she refuses
Morton tells her story not only through the actions of her characters but also through fairy tales that work on several levels and provide clues to the mystery's final solution. Many readers will have guessed the solution long before the end of the book. Nevertheless, Morton maintains reader interest throughout.
Overall, this is a highly satisfying read. It's fun to watch the author weave the lives of women into a rich tapestry of life and love, anger and betrayal. However, the novel is not without its weaknesses. Morton's male characters are weak and insipid and never come to life, and the love interest at the end of the book does not mesh with the rest of the story. It is almost as though an editor said, "You'd better add a little love story here," so the author did. But this is clearly a novel written by a woman, for women, about women.
Kate Morton’s ‘The Forgotten Garden’ is the story of Nell, who, luckily for her, is found on that dock by
It is also the story of Cassandra, Nell’s granddaughter, who, along with a cottage on the coast of Cornwall, inherits Nell’s quest.
And finally, it is the story of the imaginative Eliza, child of the Dickensian London slums, who becomes the author of the fairy tales that often intersperse the chapters.
Morton interweaves the three stories - set from 1913 to 2005 - in Australia, London, and Cornwall - as she slowly entices the reader with clues about the mysteries in the three women’s lives. Nell is a foundling searching for understanding of her origins; Eliza shares her vibrant personality but is faced with a confused and menacing heritage of her own. And Cassandra, brought up by a loving grandmother nevertheless seems to be carrying a heavy burden of her own past. Now add to this the interspersed fairy tales that mirror the themes of the story.
The strong points of Morton’s novel are her pleasant, easy-to-read story-teller’s style - the pages literally fly by - the mystery elements that hold up to the end, and the charisma of her protagonists. However, the novel’s structure was a major drawback for this reader. Each time I got involved in a character’s story, the chapter ended and the next chapter abruptly switched to a different character and time period. Every time I started to care about Nell, Cassandra, or Eliza, the time/setting/focus switch reminded me that I was reading a novel and not participating in a story. This is a matter of personal preference and will not be true for all readers. Morton’s novel will be a pleasant, even enthralling, read for many; but if, like me, you prefer a more linear plot structure, you may want to look carefully before you buy.
I really loved this book and I couldn't put it down. Morton is a great storyteller, and she does a wonderful job of slowly unfurling the mystery surrounding her characters so that the reader isn't really sure what the conclusion will be until the final pages of the novel. I feel like Morton also did a good job of representing the different times and places in her novel, while giving all of the women a certain familiar sense. The jumps between time periods were not confusing for me, and I actually thought they heightened the mystery and gave the story the satisfying sense of a slowly assembled puzzle.
I would definitely recommend this book to fans of historical fiction, gothic novels, and intergenerational family tales. I can't wait to see what else comes from Ms. Morton.
In this suspenseful story, an illustrator and the Authoress, who illustrates an important but little known fairy tales book, a dark forbidding mansion, a lovely little cottage and the Mountrachet family all spin together across generations to tell a tale of families intertwined.
It is sometimes challenging to keep the characters straight as the stories move back and forth in time and location and the book is quite long and complicated in the intricacies of the relationships. The reader will be the constant switching in time and characters from past to present, primarily the years of 1913, 1975 and 2005.
This was a lovely book to read and I look forward to reading the books that follow. I recommend this book and also believe that it would be an excellent choice as a book club selection.
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Life has dealt me an unfortunate amount of pain of late. More than vicodin, I needed a really great novel to take my mind off injuries. Kate Morton’s The Forgotten Garden was just what the doctor ordered! It is a
The catalyst driving the story is Nell Andrews. Nell grew up loved and happy in a house full of sisters in Australia. All that changed on the night of her 21st birthday. That was the night that her father confessed the secret that upended Nell’s life—he had found her abandoned at the age of four. She’d been left dockside of a ship that had just come from England. She didn’t know, or wouldn’t divulge, her name and no one came for her. He took her home that night, and he and Nell’s mother had raised her as their own.
That revelation changed the course of Nell’s life, but she never had the opportunity to seriously investigate the mystery of her origins until after her father’s death, when she was in her mid-sixties. She made significant progress, but never fully unraveled the truth. As the novel opens, we first meet four-year-old Nell, then 21-year-old Nell, and then the dying 95-year-old Nell. She’s being attended by her devoted granddaughter Cassandra. Cassandra was largely raised by Nell and was closer to her than anyone, but knew nothing of Nell’s secret until after her death. Cassandra’s even more surprised to learn that she’s been left a cottage in Cornwall, England that Nell had secretly owned for years. So begins Cassandra’s quest to finish unraveling the mystery of Nell’s life.
The story jumps back and forth in time, not just between Nell’s and Cassandra’s investigations, but between the actual events that took place between 1900 and 1913 when Nell was abandoned. There is a rich cast of characters from the gothic past, and the story that gradually unfolds is complex, compelling, and utterly gripping. There’s even a cameo by Mrs. Hodgson Burnett herself! I plowed through the nearly 600 pages in record time, and only wish it had lasted longer.
I very much enjoyed Morton’s debut, The House at Riverton. This sophomore effort seals the deal; I’ve become a devoted fan. The Forgotten Garden is one of those books that I just feel so good about recommending to almost everyone. It’s a contemporary mystery, a Victorian drama, a novel of tragedy and triumph, and more than anything else a spellbinding story from start to finish.
In 1913, a tiny girl is abandoned on a ship by her companion, "The Authoress". Lost and alone she ends up sitting on a dock in
In 1975 a woman travels from Australia to England and impulsively buys a small but charming cottage on a large estate. She plans to make it her new home, but she never returns.
In 2005 a young woman inherits the cottage and is determined to discover the answers to the many questions surrounding her family history.
This was a wonderful book, spanning 4 generations of motherless girls. The stories are woven together so skillfully, I found myself disappearing into them. Secrets are revealed, love is found and lost, envy and bitterness, permeate one life, and in the end, answers are revealed in a very satisfying way.
The characters were so richly drawn, I cared about ALL of the women, and I HAD to know what was next. The descriptions were wonderful, a travelogue for me, and it was one terrific trip.
This book is from my very own shelf!
This is one complicated story that can't be summed up in just a few sentences. I couldn't wait to read "The Forgotten Garden" because I loved Kate Morton's first book, "The House at Riverton." This story, however, just didn't do it for me. It was really long and the last half of the book dragged for me. The switches in time and place were somewhat confusing. There are many characters and I found it hard to keep track of all of them. Nell and Cassandra were my favorites, though, great characters.
The story of a four year old girl left hiding on a ship in 1913. She ends up in Australia alone on a dock. This is the wonderful story of Nell and her grandaughter, Cassandra who each travel separately back to the Cornwall Coast to
The story—which alternates between three different time periods—deals with the issues of identity and family ties. The main story concerns a 4-year-old girl who is found alone on a dock in Australia—seemingly alone in the world after arriving on a ship from England. Adopted by the harbormaster after no one claims her, the girl grows up unaware of her origins, until her adoptive father reveals it to her after his wife’s death. Shocked and unbalanced by this news, the girl pursues the mystery of her identity and biological family—using only the meager clues left to her. Upon her death, the mystery is taken up by her granddaughter, who has a tragic story of her own. Shifting between the present day, the mid-1970s and the early 1900s, The Forgotten Garden unfolds slowly and carefully—with Morton interweaving each story line seamlessly.
I have to say that I admire Morton’s skills in crafting this story. She does a brilliant job of mixing Eliza’s, Nell’s and Cassandra’s stories in a way that felt fluid and natural. We’d learn something in one time period and then go back and get the details in the next chapter. I really enjoyed this way of telling the story. It felt like historical fiction mixed with contemporary fiction mixed with literary fiction. The mystery at the heart of the book was also satisfying … I thought I’d figured everything out only to have Morton toss me a curve ball. I love when that happens!
The other aspect I enjoyed was how the Eliza Makepeace character is a writer of fairy tales, and we get to read these stories at different points throughout the book. I loved how the fairy tales shed light on the events of the story … without that always being immediate obvious to the reader. The only thing that could have improved the story even more is if they had included the illustrations that were created for the fairy tale book! (I suppose that is asking a little too much though.)
I totally get why people gush over Kate Morton. If this is the kind of books she writes, then sign me up for more! This was a very satisfying read, and I’d recommend to anyone who enjoys good old-fashioned storytelling that is crafted with care by the author. So, Morton fans, which one should I try next?
It begins with a little girl, perhaps 4 years old being discovered alone on a dock in Australia alone. Raised by the harbor master with no recollection of who she is or where she came form Nell lives her life and at 60 years old discovers she must find out who she is and goes to England with only a small suitcase and a book of fairy tales for clues. What she discovers is forgotten when she comes back to find her granddaughter literally dropped in her lap to raise. Fast forward to 2005. Nell has died and left the mystery in her granddaughters hands in the form of aan inherited cottage half a world away in England. So Cassandra goes to England to find out how her Grandmother Nell came by this cottage and why she left it to her. Its an engaging story and mystery after mystery arises as her journey progresses to a very satisfying conclusion. I guessed some of it way before revealed but it did not affect my enjoyment of the story.
Again the story and setting could be said to be derivative (Hodgson Burnett even makes a guest appearance in case you missed the reference!) but Morton makes up for it by her skills as a storyteller. It is a bit long-winded at times, and the jumping backwards and forwards can be irritating (I think this is about the 6th book in a row I've read that uses this device!) but once again she gets you involved in her characters' lives.
The little "plus" in this one is the inclusion of fairy stories written by Eliza, one of the key characters, in the early 20th century. They shed light both on Eliza's character and on events in the lives of the other characters, in a charming and unusual way. OK, there are times when things turn out a little too neatly (a long-lost and implausible letter revealing a part of the story that would have been impossible for the characters to discover otherwise, plus a few other convenient coincidences). It's easy to guess Nell's parentage by about two thirds of the way through, and the ending veers dangerously close to tweeness. But this book is all about escapism, not realism, and I think Morton is also deliberately introducing fairytale elements into her characters'lives -- she says in her afterword that the book is partly a tribute to the fairy stories she enjoyed as a child.
Basically this is just a good read, perfect for curling up by a log fire on a chilly winter night! But you need to be the type of reader who enjoys getting involved in a slow-moving and complex story.
Fairy tales, and the idea of story telling, is such a key element in the novel that the reader does not understand that The Forgotten Garden is a fairy tale until the very end. Flitting between different time periods and following the story of three very different women, all connected through some mysterious connection, the key characteristics of a fairy tale seem to be missing but on further reflection become apparent. There is an evil witch, a damsel in distress, an arduous journey that is necessary for happiness. Which character fulfills which role is not what one would expect, and yet this realization only enhances the mastery with which Ms. Morton spun her tale.
In any good fairy tale, the characters make the story, and the same is true with The Forgotten Garden. Enigmatic Eliza, lost Nell, lonely Cassandra - the reader yearns, rejoices, and despairs with each of them as they battle for the happiness each deserves. Each character stands on her own merits, and her story is a story unto itself. The Forgotten Garden truly is three stories combined into one. The character connections and similar motifs mesh the three together in a seamless fashion, so that the reader can switch from character to character without getting confused or losing interest. Enhancing the characters are lush descriptions of the Blackhurst manor, engaging secondary characters that prove to be excellent foils and comic relief for those scenes that become too intense emotionally, and an overwhelming sense of care and love Ms. Morton instills into each line of her novel, for there is no doubt that for Ms. Morton, The Forgotten Garden was a labor of love.
As the narrator, Caroline Lee does a masterful job distinguishing the many female characters that play key roles in the novel. Through the use of different dialects, pronunciations, stresses, and inflections, the listener is able to determine which character is speaking with little to no trouble. Unfortunately, The Forgotten Garden is not a novel that is best suited for the audio format. There are so many clues and hints left along the way that I wanted to review as I got further into the story but could not without listening to the entire novel again. This inability to flip through previous chapters to find the scenes I wanted to review was a momentary distraction at the time but a niggling concern nonetheless.
The Forgotten Garden came highly recommended to me by others, and I found that those recommendations have definitive merit. It has been a long time since I have enjoyed a novel solely for its story without attempting to glean a lesson from its pages, and The Forgotten Garden was an excellent reminder to enjoy reading purely for its entertainment value. There is something so simple and yet so mesmerizing about the individual stories that one cannot help but sit back and let them wash over you with delight. Enchanting and all together charming, Rose, Eliza, Nell and most importantly, Cassandra, found their way under my skin, and I yearned to keep listening to discover their secrets and their fate. I was loathe for the stories to end and cannot wait to discover Ms. Morton's other works. My hope is that they are as special as The Forgotten Garden.