~ The Clockmaker’s Daughter, by Kate Morton ~
Dense novels with a haunted house at the center are Kate Morton’s niche, and The Clockmaker’s Daughter fits neatly into her genre. But there comes a point where sheer density can drag a novel down, and this novel fits neatly into that category as well.
The novel opens with Elodie Winslow, thirty years old, an archivist in the firm of Stratton, Caldwell and Co., working her way through an old box found unexpectedly in a disused cloakroom. Elodie opens the box and discovers a satchel, at which point we are unnecessarily treated to the point of view of the satchel itself.
The pinpricks of sudden light were a shock, and the satchel, pressed deep inside the box, exhaled.
The woman in the white gloves unlatched the dull silver buckle and the satchel held its breath.
Open me, open me, open me….
Despite its apparent intensity of feeling, the satchel doesn’t speak again for the duration of the book. Perhaps it held its breath too long and umm, gave up the ghost.
Back to Elodie, who discovers a sketchbook in the satchel, which contains a drawing of a house. Not just any house, though — Elodie just knows it is the house in a story that she had heard as a child. Despite never having seen this house or even a picture of it, her identification is immediate and absolute, puzzling the people around her and straining the credulity of the reader. She also has a convenient art-world friend who identifies the artist at once. Googling for the rather generic name ‘Frances Brown‘ would point you and me to a million red herrings, but Elodie finds the portrait of the mid-Victorian artist’s fiancé right away.
Just when one is abandoning logic and getting interested in the Gothic connections between Elodie’s family and the house, the novel leaps over to the ominous thoughts of a ghost.
They have all gone. They are all long gone. And the questions remain mine. Knots that can never be untied. Turned over and over again, forgotten by all but me. For I forget nothing, no matter how hard I try.
Then further back to the ghost’s childhood, abandonment by her father, upbringing by a Dickensian foster-mother in Seven Dials, London.
We also have Elodie’s own family mysteries and problems: the death of her brilliant musician mother, the American violinist who died with her, the great-uncle who clearly has secrets but refuses to spill them, Elodie’s pompous fiancé, her upcoming wedding, her overbearing future mother-in-law.
And then another time-bounce, this time back to the late 1800s and a completely different cast of characters — Lilly Millington, a mysterious (oh, what an overused concept in this novel) young man called Pale Joe, and an evil lecherous bodyguard. There is a famous lost diamond. There is another young woman called Ada Lovegrove in 1899. There is Leonard, in 1928, and the mysterious (!!) tragedy of his brother Tom. It is hinted that the ghost has upscale connections and is not really Lilly Millington. Suddenly we are in 1940 with a tired mother of three called Juliet. Periodically a light shines in the attic of the house. The house has a hidden hidey-hole or two. A new love affair develops in current times, a hidden one from a previous generation is discovered. Back to 1862, with Lucy. (who? Readers may well lose track of the characters over the course of this book). A child drowns (or does she?) and the villagers mention the drowning, but who, exactly drowned?
And so many questions. Surely a body starts to smell within a few days, yet the house stays occupied for a week and no one notices. Why would a school principal encourage a pupil to hide in a hidey-hole? Given her history, why does the ghost do likewise to small children? How did the policeman get the painting? What’s the deal with the tuppence? Why was it important that the ersatz Lilly Millington was partly of noble birth? Why would an old woman tell her descendants about the diamond, but not what she knew had happened to it?
The writing is perfectly adequate, and quite lovely in some of the descriptions of the English countryside. It’s the plot — with its many time periods, plentiful characters and coincidences — that is the problem. A hundred fewer pages and a dozen fewer characters, and then there might have been more to discuss.
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