The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton

In 1913, a little girl turns arrives in Australia from England on ship all alone .  She can’t remember her name or how she came to be on the ship.  The dockmaster takes the little girl in, gives her a name – Nell and raises her as his own.  When she is 21, he decides to let her know about her mysterious origins.  This knowledge changes her whole outlook and eventually she sets out to England to try and find out who she is and why nobody ever came to look for her.

The story is told from several different points of view, Eliza in the early 1900s, Nell mostly in the mid 70s and Cassandra mostly in 2005.  After Nell dies, Cassandra, her granddaughter, is left to try and solve the mystery of Nell’s parentage and her solo voyage to Australia.  Eliza is the author of a book of fairy tales that was one of the few things Nell had with her when she arrived in Australia.

The story had so many narrators and so many characters that it had the potential to become quite confusing but it didn’t.  It was a long story with lots of twists and turns and while it wasn’t a book I just HAD to read, it was still very captivating and enjoyable to read.  It moved slowly but not in a bad way.  It was a very comfortable read.  It’s the kind of book you like to curl up with on a rainy day.  It reminded me a lot of The Thirteenth Tale by Dianne Setterfield.

It is a very long book but it didn’t feel like it was too long.  Sometimes books like this that have lots of little ends to tie up tend to wrap everything up at the end too quickly and it feels like the author was rushing to meet a deadline or something.  Not this book – the pace was nice and even throughout the book and it had great flow (even though it was told through so many characters.)  I really enjoyed this book and I can’t wait to read more of Morton’s novels.