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From Amazon
Amazon Best of the Month, April 2008: In her cinematic debut novel, Kate Morton immerses readers in the dramas of the Ashbury family at their crumbling English country estate in the years surrounding World War I, an age when Edwardian civility, shaken by war, unravels into the Roaring Twenties. Grace came to serve in the house as a girl. She left as a young woman, after the presumed suicide of a famous young poet at the property's lake. Though she has dutifully kept the family's secrets for decades, memories flood back in the twilight of her life when a young filmmaker comes calling with questions about how the poet really died--and why the Ashbury sisters never again spoke to each other afterward. With beautifully crafted prose, Morton methodically reveals how passion and fate transpired that night at the lake, with truly shocking results. Her final revelation at the story's close packs a satisfyi! ng (and not overly sentimental) emotional punch. --Mari Malcolm
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. This debut page-turner from Australian Morton recounts the crumbling of a prominent British family as seen through the eyes of one of its servants. At 14, Grace Reeves leaves home to work for her mother's former employers at Riverton House. She is the same age as Hannah, the headstrong middle child who visits her uncle, Lord Ashbury, at Riverton House with her siblings Emmeline and David. Fascinated, Grace observes their comings and goings and, as an invisible maid, is privy to the secrets she will spend a lifetime pretending to forget. But when a filmmaker working on a movie about the family contacts a 98-year-old Grace to fact-check particulars, the memories come swirling back. The plot largely revolves around sisters Hannah and Emmeline, who were present when a family friend, the young poet R.S. Hunter, allegedly committed suicide at Riverton. Grace hints throughout the narrative that no one knows the real story, and as she chronicles Hannah's schemes to have her own life and the curdling of younger Emmeline's jealousy, the truth about the poet's death is revealed. Morton triumphs with a riveting plot, a touching but tense love story and a haunting ending. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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Most helpful customer reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Couldn't put it down!,
By
This review is from: House at Riverton (Paperback)
I purchased this book as it was recommended to me by Amazon, due to the fact I had purchased, "The Thirteenth Tale" by Diane Setterfield. I would say it was a wonderful recommendation! I was hooked immediately. Although I am not a huge fan of story lines that switch back and forth between the present and the past, Kate Morton did a really great job of doing this and I found I didn't mind it at all. The story flowed well. I enjoyed this book so much, I am planning on buying the next book Kate Morton has recently released...I just have to wait until the price goes down a bit!
23 of 25 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
I loved this book,
By
This review is from: The House at Riverton: A Novel (Hardcover)
In 1914, when she was 14, Grace came to Riverton Manor as a housemaid. There she met the Master's grandchildren, David, Hannah, and Emmeline, whose lives would forever be linked with her own. Now at the age of 98, Grace looks back at those early years of duty and service, selflessness and silence, and narrates her story while there is still time.To give away more of the plot would be to rob other readers of the sublime delight I found in reading this book. It is told through the eyes of an old lady who has known great sorrow and some joys. She paints a vivid picture of life among the idle country rich before and after the first War, how carefree children became conflicted adults, and how passion erupted in gunfire amid the fireworks of a grand summer party. The author has written such a wonderful story and I loved being a part of it. I sobbed through the last chapters knowing the story had to end, knowing what that end would be. I could identify with young Grace as she stoically tended to her spoiled mistress and felt I was holding old Grace's hand as she lay in her bed at the nursing home. This book MUST be made into a movie - it is powerful, dramatic, and heartbreaking, equal parts of mystery, romance, and history - the best book I've read in years.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
"The final thread that tethered me has released",
By
This review is from: The House at Riverton: A Novel (Hardcover)
I'm probably the last reader on the planet to pick up The House at Riverton: A Novel, and I don't know why I denied myself the pleasure for so long. This debut novel by Australian Kate Morton was released first in Australia and was already a #1 seller and award-winner in the U.K. before its 2008 release in the U.S. It's a big modern Gothic, ranging over more than eight decades but cleverly contained within the story structure of a first-person narrative.Grace Bradley, 98 years old and residing in a nursing home, is contacted by a young film-maker producing a film about the 1924 suicide of a young poet. The poet took his life at Riverton, the country manor where Grace was a ladies' maid, and since Grace is the only living person to have known the poet and the family at Riverton, the film-maker wants to interview her. So begins a retrospective view of Grace's life at Riverton, where she went into service in 1914 at the age of fourteen. The elderly Grace is in the process of recording the details of her life at Riverton for her grandson, a novelist. The book moves back and forth between Grace's first-person accounts and her life in the nursing home as the movie progresses. The author deftly handles the First World War combat of the poet and his friend, a young man from the Riverton house; she presents as vivid a picture as I've seen in a novel of the fear and isolation in the trenches and the war-torn French countryside. Out of this experience flows the "shell shock" of the young poet, making the wartime scenes a contributing cause of his death. However, there were secrets, and it's clear throughout the book that Grace knows them--Grace alone, now, after all these years. Fortunately, the book doesn't rest entirely on the secrets of Riverton, because in the end they're not so surprising. But the marvelous "Upstairs, Downstairs" feel of the book is pure delight, and the fact that it's framed with a modern story adds to the feeling that we're looking into a stereoscope at old photos. When the film-maker takes Grace to visit the site of Riverton, where it all happened so long ago, the veil between past and present shifts for her as the old secrets want to be told. Kate Morton's second novel, The Forgotten Garden: A Novel, was just as beautifully crafted as this debut; and we eagerly await her next offering. If you haven't read "Riverton" and "The Forgotten Garden," it's never too late; they are timeless. Linda Bulger, 2010
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