Tuesday, January 11, 2011

The forgotten garden, by Kate Morton

I'm not quite sure why I reserved this book, but did enjoy it in a guilty sort of way. It was a bit like A. S. Byatt Lite crossed with Rebecca. In 1913 a very young girl is found on an Australian wharf knowing neither her name nor where she is from. Raised by the wharf master and his wife as "Nell," ultimately her history leads her granddaughter, Cassandra, back to the girl's real family in England where they live in a great house in Cornwall. There are mazes and secret gardens; Dickensian orphans; changelings; and interspersed throughout the story are fairy tales written by "the authoress" who abandoned Nell on the ship bound for Australia. Charming in an old-fashioned kind of way and a pleasant way to spend a couple of cold winter nights. 559 pp.

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