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A review by elizanderson1066
The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton
3.0
2.5 stars. Definitely a middle of the road novel which had promise but unfortunately fell flat.
I'm always a sucker for a non-linear timeline, so when the blurb offered up a narrative which leapt back and forth from the beginning of the 20th century, to the mid 1970s and present day (20o5) I was intrigued, and very much hoped for a story which would at least deliver on the plotline front. Having read Morton before, I knew that I wasn't going to bowled over by the writing, and I was not wrong.
The first third or so seemed to be living up to expectations - a decent mystery was unfolding which I eagerly got my teeth into. A girl is found alone on the docks in Brisbane, with no family or memory of where she has come from. The novel then leaps forward to the present day where Nell's (little girl's) granddaughter is trying to find out what happened almost a century ago. I liked the way the chapters seemed to link to one another as they skipped around through the timeline, e.g. an object of significance found in the present leading on to a chapter in which we find out why the object is significant.
However, as the novel went on (for at least 200 pages too long), I got bored with the overstretched plot and the bland characters. Some of the dialogue was cringeworthy, and there was no development to speak of. I would have been wiling to overlook that but then the "mystery" was eventually resolved and turned out to be the most obvious plot point I could have imagined. Like I had already written that option off as it was way too obvious and no novelist in their right mind would ever do that would they??? Sigh. They would apparently. It also makes the protagonist even more annoying when she acts all surprised about it.
Readable but incredibly mundane. I think that's enough of Kate Morton for me.
I'm always a sucker for a non-linear timeline, so when the blurb offered up a narrative which leapt back and forth from the beginning of the 20th century, to the mid 1970s and present day (20o5) I was intrigued, and very much hoped for a story which would at least deliver on the plotline front. Having read Morton before, I knew that I wasn't going to bowled over by the writing, and I was not wrong.
The first third or so seemed to be living up to expectations - a decent mystery was unfolding which I eagerly got my teeth into. A girl is found alone on the docks in Brisbane, with no family or memory of where she has come from. The novel then leaps forward to the present day where Nell's (little girl's) granddaughter is trying to find out what happened almost a century ago. I liked the way the chapters seemed to link to one another as they skipped around through the timeline, e.g. an object of significance found in the present leading on to a chapter in which we find out why the object is significant.
However, as the novel went on (for at least 200 pages too long), I got bored with the overstretched plot and the bland characters. Some of the dialogue was cringeworthy, and there was no development to speak of. I would have been wiling to overlook that but then the "mystery" was eventually resolved and turned out to be the most obvious plot point I could have imagined. Like I had already written that option off as it was way too obvious and no novelist in their right mind would ever do that would they??? Sigh. They would apparently. It also makes the protagonist even more annoying when she acts all surprised about it.
Readable but incredibly mundane. I think that's enough of Kate Morton for me.