We were on a road trip the first 17 days of this month, so I only read one book.
Homecoming by Kate Morton
I won this book in a contest in a publisher's e-mail newsletter, where I enter the drawings for every book that looks remotely interesting. While many readers have tagged this book as historical fiction (probably due to the dual storylines, from 1959-60 and 2018, both set mostly in Australia), I felt it was more of a mystery.
The 2018 story features almost-40 Jess Turner-Bridges, the granddaughter of Nora and daughter of Polly. Nora's had a fall and is in the hospital, and Jess returns to Sydney, Australia from her home in London to be with the grandmother who mostly raised her, as Polly (who lives in Brisbane) is somewhat estranged from both Nora and Jess.
Jess is trying to figure out what upset her grandmother enough to send her up into the attic, causing the fall. Jess finds a book about the 1959 Christmas Eve murder/suicide of Isabel Turner and three of her four children (the youngest, a six-week old baby, missing from the scene), and realizes that the Nora in the book, sister-in-law to Isabel, is her Nora. The book, by a now-dead (fictional) Daniel Miller, is "true crime" with fiction narrative techniques to dramatize it. He follows the official investigation, and does a lot of investigating and interviewing on his own. Whole chapters of Miller's "book" are yet another narrative thread in this one.
The story is told from multiple points of view (in both time periods), is rather long, and somewhat confusing, especially at the beginning. I figured out part of the mystery pretty quickly, but was still surprised by a few more plot points (the "hows" and the "whys") at the end. The desire to find those out kept me reading.
I will say that the Miller-"authored" parts in the book annoyed me. We have a writer in our town who embellishes his local history posts with invented dialogues and "additional literary items ... added to improve your understanding and enjoyment of this true-life adventure," as well as AI-generated illustrations. I think he's misleading readers, and that annoys me too.
No comments:
Post a Comment