The Distant Hours

I loved this book. It kept me spellbound and entranced your after hour, reminding me of the hours I spent as a child and teenager devouring Victoria Holt, Mary Stewart, and Daphne duMaurier. You can read the synopsis of the book for yourself. This is a gothic novel in the most classic and traditional sense. There is the castle, a character in and of itself, the spinster sisters still living there into their old age, a la Miss Havisham, and a young woman who is destined to learn part, but not all, of their story. Kate Morton is a winsome writer who has the great ability to weave enchanting pictures and lives with her words. Enjoy the book!

I just finished The Distant Hours, my second within a couple of weeks by Kate Morton. I just find that I have so much admiration for this writer. The plots, the writing, the suspense, keeping the whole thing tied together while skipping from character to character, location to location, time period to time period. She achieves all of this so smoothly, and we all know how hard it can be to make sub-plots and characters all hang together. The Distant Hours was yet another by this author that I couldn\’t put down. Toward the end, the whole story was coming together, some new aspects of it being uncovered on every page. The book gripped me on every page and would not let go, right up to the very end, where, just when you think it\’s all been revealed, there is another extra little…satisfying tidbit. After reading The House At Riverton (superlative story), I looked over the reviews of the other four from Kate Morton. There appeared to be a sort of pattern of a mystery from the past surfacing to be unraveled in the present. I thought I\’d be disappointed if she got repetitious, but the first was so great that I wanted to read at least one more, and then if it looked as if she didn\’t have any new ideas, then I would stop reading her books. Well, I can now affirm, having read two of this writer\’s books, that they have not palled, and she is not a one-book-wonder who petered out. I loved The Distant Hours as much as I did The House At Riverton. My problem now is to choose which of her books I want to read next.

This book was assigned for my book club, and I would never otherwise have read it. Morton is an excellent writer – her prose is fluent and even elegant, her descriptions are perceptive and even memorable at times. Unfortunately, the book is 80% descriptions, far too many repetitive at best, at the expense of both balance and reasonable length of narrative – this was a 200 page book inflated to 560. It would be senseless to list the many specific shortcomings. The simple plot and sub-plot just aren\’t in any way worthy of this many pages of disorganization and repetition, even when written well.

This is a story of love in many forms: love between father and child, mother and child, sisters, brothers; romantic love, love of home, and love of books. It seems the journey from beginning to end is long – but when I got to the final destination I realized that the tale just takes as long as it takes. During World War II Meredith Baker, a pre-adolescent girl, was evacuated from London to the countryside with her siblings, but ended up being placed separately with the three Blythe sisters, daughters of celebrated author Raymond Blythe, at their home called Middlehurst Castle. Meredith leaves a few years later and resumes her London life, eventually marrying and giving birth to daughter Edie Burchill who herself gets to visit the castle several times; the longest visit is to write the preface to a new release of Raymond Blythe’s 1918 book The True History of the Mudman. This summary sounds maybe a little dry; the novel is anything but. There are the voices in the walls, you see, and so much unrequited love. Some plot-reveals that the author may have meant to be surprises aren’t all that surprising, while other subtle twists will expose the way in which The True History of the Mudman is unavoidably and tragically tied to the fate of the three Sisters Blythe. The story is narrated mainly in the first person by Edie, who works in publishing in the 1990’s. The point of view shifts frequently though, with changes in perspective and in time, moving between the 90’s and the 1940’s, and even earler. Each of the Sisters Blythe tells part of her story (but in second person, as with everyone except Edie), and we also hear from Meredith Burchill nee Baker and, very briefly, the young Thomas Cavill, in what is arguably one of the most poignant depictions of love and hope in literature today. I listened to the audio version; Caroline Lee’s Australian accent, while easy on the ears, did cause me to repeatedly and mistakenly place Middlehurst somewhere Down Under instead of in Kent in the UK, but I got over it. I was left with a sense of a family saga come full circle. I was especially struck by the plight of the children of wartime London; it’s much more real in this story than in any Narnia installment. The Distant Hours is part gothic novel, part mystery, and part love story. When you get to the end, you’ll see that the story just – takes as long as it takes.

I fell into this book and became engrossed. The characters are mesmerizing. This book held my interest from first word to last, so much so that as soon as I finished reading it I read it again. I\’ve never done that before. The audio book was equally spellbinding. I like to listen as I\’m falling asleep but it was difficult to do so. The narrator kept my interest and I didn\’t want to stop listening. Very good storytelling!!!

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