Kate Morton

Book of the month – December 2023

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Homecoming

Kate Morton

61683285I first discovered Australian novelist, Kate Morton, when I found her first three novels in a garage sale several years ago. Since then, I’ve read every book she’s written. When I learned that she’d published a new novel in April of 2023, I immediately put my name on a waiting list with our regional library system. Obviously, Morton’s books are popular because the list was already long and I had to wait many months before Homecoming finally arrived.

I knew when I picked up the book, all 544 pages of it, I would have a hard time putting it down. Thankfully, it came at a time when most of my Christmas preparations were complete and I could sink into the story without too many distractions.

On Christmas Eve 1959, a terrible tragedy rocks the small town of Tambilla in South Australia’s Adelaide Hills. A local man makes a terrible discovery; a mother and three of her children lying dead on a picnic blanket looking as if they are asleep. The youngest child, a baby, has disappeared without a trace.

Almost 60 years later, having lived and worked in London for nearly two decades, journalist Jess Turner-Bridges returns to Australia when her beloved and very elderly grandmother suffers a fall and is seriously ill in hospital. It’s only then that she hears for the first time about the Turner family tragedy of 1959 and begins to try to unravel the mysteries surrounding the deaths and the baby’s disappearance.

Homecoming is an epic novel that spans generations. It’s a gripping story of deeply buried family secrets, sins, and sorrows. It touches on themes of family, motherhood, home, loneliness, loss, identity and belonging. It’s a book you won’t want to put down!

I resolved…

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I quit making New Years resolutions many years ago because I found that by doing so I was simply setting myself up for failure. Last year, however, I resolved to read at least two books every month because I knew that I was wasting too much time online. I felt that reading, which I’ve always thoroughly enjoyed, would be a valuable and measurable alternative.

So, how did I do?

In order to monitor my success, I kept a month by month list of all the books I read in 2017. While I marginally exceeded my goal for the year by reading 26 books in all, there were some months when I read more than two and others where I finished none or only one.

More importantly, did reading cut down on my online time?  

I’m really not sure. I use the internet for a wide variety of purposes including reading the news, communicating with friends and family around the world, editing, and of course, writing my blog. I consider all of those to be valuable ways to use my time, but it’s the time that I was spending repeatedly checking my email accounts, Facebook and my blog stats that I wanted to cut down on. Unfortunately, that’s difficult to measure and I still find myself doing it more often than I feel I ought to.

What am I going to do about it?

Once again, I resolve to read a minimum of two books EVERY month in 2018. I’m also going to try some new authors and different genres. Any suggestions? What do you enjoy reading?

I read a good mix of novels, non-fiction, and autobiographical books in 2017 and I would like to do that again. Australian novelist, Kate Morton, is the only author that I read more than one book by (The Distant Hours, The Secret Keeper, and The Lake House). I’ve always enjoyed memoirs and autobiographies. Over the past year, I thoroughly enjoyed The Last Foundling by Tom H. Mackenzie and My Secret Sister by Helen Edwards and Jenny Lee Smith, but the one that surprised me most was Changing My Mind by Margaret Trudeau. I clearly remember the day in March 1971 when she surprised the world by marrying our popular prime minister, Pierre Ellliott Trudeau, who was 29 years her senior, and the years of turmoil that followed. The book is an honest and courageous telling of her lifelong battle with mental illness and gave me a greater understanding of bipolar disorder.

Have you read any good books lately?

The House at Riverton

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If you, like me, are grieving the cancellation of TV’s popular drama series, Downton Abbey, then have I got a book for you!

Riverton

Originally released in her native Australia as The Shifting Fog, The House at Riverton was author, Kate Morton’s, debut novel. Described on the back cover as “the captivating story of an aristocratic family, a glorious English estate, a mysterious death and a way of life that vanished forever”, the story is set in England between the two great wars. Told in flashback by 98-year-old Grace, who was employed at Riverton, first as a housemaid and later as lady’s maid to the family’s eldest daughter, I found it a captivating read. The time period and master/servant relationships were so very reminiscent of Downton Abbey!

I’m not generally a fan of mysteries, but this one is more than a simple who-done-it and kept my attention to the end. In addition to providing a window into a fascinating time in history, The House at Riverton explores topics like memory and long held secrets, the devastation of war, and the end of an era.

Since The Shifting Fog was released in 2006, Kate Morton has published four more novels. I picked up The House at Riverton and two of the others, The Forgotten Garden and The Distant Hours, at a garage sale this spring thinking that they would make great summer reading. So  far, I haven’t been disappointed. We’ll be camping for the next couple of weeks and the other will be going with me.

What are you reading this summer?