Now that was fun - in a dark, brooding sort of way. It was nice to read a story with a plot - I guess I am still annoyed by the time I wasted on the book I read before this one.
The Distant Hours has all the elements of a classic gothic romance, but never quite succumbs to the cliche. There is the ancient castle with almost the suggestion that, like a fairytale castle, it can only be discovered by accident. Like the House of Usher, its very existence is tied to the family of the house named, in contradiction to their nature, Blythe. The ghosts of past generations inhabit the stones of the castle in a narrative area somewhere between reality and fantasy and theirs are the distant hours of the title. There is murder and madness and genius -- and a will (both in the sense of character and paper) that destroys the hope of happiness for the last generation. There is the young girl who arrives to stir the waters - in this instance by the vehicle of the World War II evacuations of children from London, rather than as a nurse or governess.
Morton has a trick of revealing consequences before causes, which sets up a myriad of possible explanations all wound up in long-kept secrets. Instances of clear foreshadowing (remember the pet cemetary?) serve to draw attention away from the actual events of the past yet to be revealed but are still significant in the eventual revelation.
The story of the story The Mud Man is the greater loop of the novel, but there are lesser circles which must be closed as well. Why does Seraphina hate cousin Emily? Why does Persephone dislike Mrs. Bird? Why did Juniper have blood on her shirt? Morton faithfully fills the reader in on the "facts" of all her red herrings. An excellent quality in a novelist.
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