The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton

In 1913, a ship arrives in Australia from London with a four-year-old girl travelling alone on board. She carries nothing but a small suitcase with a book of fairy tales inside, and she says she cannot remember her name. All she remembers is that a lady she calls The Authoress told her she would come back for her. In Brisbane, 2005, Cassandra inherits an old cottage in Cornwall from her recently deceased grandmother, a cottage of whose existence she had no idea. Her grandmother, Nell, was once the little girl on that ship. Cassandra follows her footsteps and travels to England to help solve the mystery of her past.

And so begins a story that is full of things I love: an old house in Cornwall, Blackhurst Manor, full of family secrets going back to Victorian and Edwardian times; a family mystery and a literary mystery; an appearance by Frances Hodgson Burnett; old tales of Cornish smugglers and cursed ships; and there's even the inclusion of some of Eliza Makepeace’s (the mysterious Authoress) fairy tales in the book. In addition to all this, the book itself is absolutely beautiful: look at this picture Chelle took of the inside cover.

Sounds awesome, right? Sigh, I thought so too. I wanted to love The Forgotten Garden. In fact, I was completely convinced that I would. But I hadn’t been this let down by a book in a long, long while. My main problem was Kate Morton’s writing style, which I passionately disliked. It’s the kind of writing that has me rolling my eyes and making sarcastic remarks to my cats as I read. Not everyone will feel as I do, of course, and because I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, I’ll do my best to spare you the sarcasm. But here are some excerpts so you can see what the writing is like for yourselves:

The move back to Australia hadn’t helped, but that was retrospect talking. Nell knew better than to allow exhibits of hindsight in the court of self-blame.

(Um...)

He was a scribble of a man. Frail and fine and stooped from a knot in the centre of his knobbled back. Beige slacks with grease spots clung to the marble of his knees, twig-like ankles rose stoically from oversized shoes, and tufts of white floss sprouted from various fertile spots on an otherwise smooth scalp. He looked like a character from a children’s story. A fairy story.

(Stoically? Fertile?!)

A brass bell tinkled in the doorjamb and the old man turned to look at her. Thick spectacle lenses caught the light, shone like two round mirrors, and impossibly large ears balanced on the sides of his head, white hair colonizing them from within.

(Colonizing?! Okay, okay—I promised.)

She could hear her heart, a sparrow no longer but a raven with large, powerful wings, beating within her chest.

This kind of writing really doesn’t work for me. Another problem was that this book reminded me a lot of Possession—connected storylines set in the present and in the past, a mystery surrounding a writer of fairy tales, the fairy tales themselves included in the book, some letters and journal entries and academic bits…I’m not saying The Forgotten Garden is a rip-off, as it’s definitely different enough to be its own thing. But it’s also similar enough that I was frequently reminded of Possession, of how much this pales in comparison, and of how I’d rather be re-reading it instead.

This is a story with many characters living in different time periods, and it’s told in the third person. And then, like I said, there are letters, journals, bits of books, etc. Which leads me to another problem: all these voices sounded exactly alike. The writing style was always the same, no matter if we were reading a letter, an excerpt from an academic text, a fairy tale, or a piece of the story proper. So I couldn’t bring myself to fully believe those voices from the past. I even—gasp!—disliked the fairy tales. They felt like mere allegories, lifeless and hollow.

On top of everything, I had a lot of trouble connecting with the characters. Most of the time they just irritated me. There’s a romance involving Cassandra, the modern day character, and scenes that are meant to be touching had me rolling my eyes. And as for her grandmother, Nell—this probably sounds horribly unsympathetic of me, but I just couldn’t understand why being told she was adopted ruined her life. Don’t worry, this is not a spoiler; it happens in the first ten pages of the book or so. She is 21 when her father tells her the truth, and from then on she completely withdraws from the family who raised and loved her for seventeen years, all because they’re not her “real” family. I know that adopted kids sometimes have trouble adjusting to the truth, especially if it was hidden from them for so long. But to be so bitter about it for the rest of her life (and she lived a long life) just seemed so melodramatic to me.

The whole book was a huge dramafest, and I’ll be the first to admit that dramafests can be kind of awesome—especially if old Victorian skeletons in the closet are involved. And sometimes it was awesome. But most of the time it was just too much. Also, the solution to mystery is obvious to readers because we are watching events unfold in the present and in the past. So the false clues Cassandra follows are, to us, obviously false, except she can’t possibly know. And okay, it’s not really her fault—but, to me at least, watching characters take forever to figure out what the reader knows all along is just annoying.

Having said that, I did read all 659 pages of it, and it didn’t even take me long. Considering how much I disliked the writing, that’s saying a lot. To be honest, towards the end I must have been getting used to it, because it didn’t bother me as much anymore. But the little voice in my head saying I should be re-reading Possession instead just wouldn’t shut up.

Many people loved this book, and apart from the writing I can see its appeal. If you like stories about old houses and family secrets a la The Thirteenth Tale, you might want to give this a try. And like I said, not everyone will have the problems I did with the writing. Make sure you click the links below to read some different opinions:

Violet Crush
Lesley’s Book Nook
Julie’s Jewels
Mysteries in Paradise

(Did I miss yours?)