The Distant Hours
The Distant Hoursby Kate Morton
A long lost letter arrives in the post and Edie Burchill finds herself on a journey to Milderhurst Castle, a great but moldering old house, where the Blythe spinsters live and where her mother was billeted 50 years before as a 13 year old child during WW II. The elder Blythe sisters are twins and have spent most of their lives looking after the third and youngest sister, Juniper, who hasn’t been the same since her fiance jilted her in 1941.Inside the decaying castle, Edie begins to unravel her mother’s past. But there are other secrets hidden in the stones of Milderhurst, and Edie is about to learn more than she expected. The truth of what happened in ‘the distant hours’ of the past has been waiting a long time for someone to find it. (goodreads.com)
Release date: November 9, 2o10This poor ARC. I am obsessively delicate with all my books. To the point people think I am insane. You can't even tell that a book has been cracked open with most of my books because I am so careful with them. Not this one. This poor book looks like I tossed it out of a car window and then let an entire convoy of trucks, muddy children and buffalo run over it. No matter how careful I tried to be this book would fall, have a bowl of stew fall on it (and I don't even eat close to my book!), fall some more, tripped over. ARGH. Luckily the cover is just plain, blue cardstock, but still. I think my ARC was cursed. Not to mention that the ARC is 679 pages and is really hard to hold when you have sore wrists. Poor book.And now - the review:I am not a patient person. When I am going somewhere I want to get from Point A to Point B as fast as possible and with as little car sickness as possible. Therefore I will never, ever take the scenic route to get to where I am going. This book? This book takes a literary scenic route to get to the solution of the mystery that had me so riveted. Yes, the writing is beautiful, and yes the characters are compelling (especially Saffy. She was my favourite!) but I found my mind wandering on a couple of occasions while reading this book because it was just so long.I am not saying I enjoyed this book because I was asked to review it. I am saying I enjoyed this book because I truly did enjoy this book. I do, however, feel it could have been edited slightly more to cut down on some of the memory lane or description. There were times I felt the story dragged on and I would just skim the paragraphs until I got to the meat of the story.Mostly, I was impatient. I wanted to know what Edie's mother's secret was. I wanted to know why Juniper was crazy as a bat. I wanted to know what secrets were hidden behind the walls of Milderhurst Castle (and am just not realizing I thought it was MIDDLEHURST castle, oops. Dyslexia 1 : Cat 0). Just when it seemed like something was about to be revealed we were thrown back in the past to one of the character's points of view and had to discover the clues during that time.Many people have mentioned this story reminds them of The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield, and it's true on some levels. I personally feel that The Thirteenth Tale was a tighter story with less meandering through the literary scenic spots which helped me stay with the story from start to finish. I feel like The Distant Hours has the potential to be a sort of suspenseful mystery but it falls a teeny bit short with the beautiful but long description and visits to the past.That being said, I am thrilled I got a chance to read this book because I probably would have never really known about it. I don't think I had ever heard of The Forgotten Garden, Morton's previous book that apparently everyone but me knows about. I do know that now that I have read one of her books I am going to have to pick up the Garden one to read it as well. She writes beautifully and eloquently and I am interested to meet the other characters from her imagination and see how they are doing.Thanks to Simon & Schuster Canada for contacting me about this book. And BIG thanks to S&S Canada because I will be receiving a couple of finished copies in the next month or so to give away to some lucky readers. Please stay tuned if you're interested in this book - because you might just win one!