Helpful Score: 4
This was such an incredibly haunting and heartbreaking book. You know from the very beginning that some unspeakable tragedy has occurred in the lives of the Hartford family, and you spend the rest of the book watching it all unfold.
'The House at Riverton' was a perfect blend of two other books. The style, tone, and structure of 'Riverton' reminded me very much of Diane Setterfield's 'The Thirteenth Tale.' The incredibly realistic descriptions and insights into the life of a professional serving staff was on par with Kazo Ishiguro's 'The Remains of the Day.'
The best summary I can give of what this book contains is a quote from the Author's Note. Morton states that the concept of 'Riverton' appealed to her because it was able to ..."utilize tropes of the literary gothic; the haunting of the present by the past; the insistence of family secrets; return of the repressed; the centrality of inheritance (material, psychological, and physical); haunted houses (particularly haunting of a metaphysical nature); suspicion concerning new technology and changing methods; the entrapment of women (whether physical or social) and associated claustrophobia; character doubling; the unreliability of memory and the partial nature of history; mysteries and the unseen; confessional narrative; and embedded texts."
The story is incredibly compelling and it will leave you guessing about the real truth of events until the very last pages. It stays with you even after you finish it just as much for the things that it reveals as for the things it leaves unspoken. This is a masterful debut novel and I highly recommend it.
'The House at Riverton' was a perfect blend of two other books. The style, tone, and structure of 'Riverton' reminded me very much of Diane Setterfield's 'The Thirteenth Tale.' The incredibly realistic descriptions and insights into the life of a professional serving staff was on par with Kazo Ishiguro's 'The Remains of the Day.'
The best summary I can give of what this book contains is a quote from the Author's Note. Morton states that the concept of 'Riverton' appealed to her because it was able to ..."utilize tropes of the literary gothic; the haunting of the present by the past; the insistence of family secrets; return of the repressed; the centrality of inheritance (material, psychological, and physical); haunted houses (particularly haunting of a metaphysical nature); suspicion concerning new technology and changing methods; the entrapment of women (whether physical or social) and associated claustrophobia; character doubling; the unreliability of memory and the partial nature of history; mysteries and the unseen; confessional narrative; and embedded texts."
The story is incredibly compelling and it will leave you guessing about the real truth of events until the very last pages. It stays with you even after you finish it just as much for the things that it reveals as for the things it leaves unspoken. This is a masterful debut novel and I highly recommend it.
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