The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton (2011 TBR Challenge #3)

In 1913, a little girl is found abandoned on a ship to Australia. Ninety years later, her granddaughter Cassandra will journey back to England to unravel the mystery of her family’s past. The story moves back and forth from present to past, revealing a story of a secret garden, a mysterious lady authoress, a supposed family curse and two cousins who quarrel.

The book is a brick at 554 pages but it's an easy, quick read. Morton handles the timelines and point-of-view switches reasonably well, and I particularly liked the way she uses rather melancholy, lovely nested fairytales inside the narrative.

However, mostly this felt like something I'd read before. This is partly deliberate, I guess, as Morton wears her references on her sleeves. The plot bears more than a passing resemblance to AS Byatt's Possession and Frances Hodgson-Burnett herself, author of The Secret Garden, appears briefly as a party guest. But all references aside, I doubt it was Morton's intention that the central mystery of the story doesn't feel much like a mystery at all.

My 12 books for the 2011 TBR Challenge