The Lake House

 

Title: The Lake House

Author: Kate Morton

Publisher: Allen and Unwin

Category: Fiction

Pages: 596

Available formats: Print and Ebook

Publication Date: 21/10/15

RRP: AU$32.99

Synopsis: A missing child.

 

June 1933, and the Edevane family’s country house, Loeanneth, is polished and gleaming, ready for the much-anticipated Midsummer Eve party. Alice Edevane, sixteen years old and a budding writer, is especially excited. Not only has she worked out the perfect twist for her novel, she’s also fallen helplessly in love with someone she shouldn’t have. But by the time midnight strikes and fireworks light up the night skies, the Edevane family will have suffered a loss so great that they leave Loeanneth forever.

 

An abandoned house.

 

Seventy years later, after a particularly troubling case, Sadie Sparrow is sent on an enforced break from her job with the Metropolitan Police. She retreats to her beloved grandfather’s cottage in Cornwall but soon finds herself at a loose end. Until one day, Sadie stumbles upon an abandoned house surrounded by overgrown gardens and dense woods, and learns the story of a baby boy who disappeared without a trace.

 

An unsolved mystery.

 

Meanwhile, in the attic writing room of her elegant Hampstead home, the formidable Alice Edevane, now an old lady, leads a life as neatly plotted as the bestselling detective novels she writes. Until a young police detective starts asking questions about her family’s past, seeking to resurrect the complex tangle of secrets Alice has spent her life trying to escape.

 

~*~

 

Kate Morton’s fifth novel starts with a mysterious scene that invites the reader into the story instantly. I wanted to know who this girl was, carrying a bag at night to bury. And why? Immediately, the reader is thrust into the world of mystery, the mystery disappearance of little Theo Edevane in 1933, and his family. Parallel to this story is that of Sadie Sparrow, a police detective on leave after a troubling case, and reprimand – seventy years after Theo’s disappearance. She discovers Loeanneth during a walk with her grandfather’s dogs, and is drawn into the mystery of the missing child, Theo.

When Sadie contacts Alice about the disappearance of Theo in 1933, eager to uncover the truth, a series of events lead to the lives of Sadie, her grandfather, Alice and Alice’s assistant colliding to resolve what happened.

Like Kate’s other novels, The Lake House journeys between 1933 and 2003, and the years of The First World War and the intervening seventy years, with significant events and clues being dropped throughout the book at careful intervals, and the right places. The story of Theo’s disappearance parallels Sadie’s current life, the case that made her break protocol, that keeps haunting her throughout the book, and her own past that has come back to haunt her throughout the book. These threads slowly combine to unite the story in a way that still has me thinking about it, even days after completing the final chapter.

The setting of Cornwall, and the mysterious Loeannath create the perfect air of mystery, and the house, left alone for seventy years, acts as a time machine, transporting the characters and the reader back to the time of the Midsummer Party, and disappearance of little Theo, and the raw emotions of the time bubble to the surface when Alice enters the house with Bertie, Sadie’s grandfather, Sadie and Peter. Entering the house with them, the shadow of the mystery hung over the beautiful house yet at the same time, it was as though the house had come back to life for the first time in seventy years.

The mystery was well presented, and the parallels in the lives of the characters echoed each other in an effective manner, bringing it to a nice conclusion that has left me wanting to know more about the fates of these characters. I look forward to the next book by Kate Morton.