by Boomert - The Shifting Fog by Kate Morton 07 Jan 2010

The Shifting Fog (Kate Morton, A&U, July, ISBN 1741148006) ***

There has been a lot of buzz about this debut novel from Queenslander Kate Morton, and on the whole it is deserved. This is the sort of very readable, commercial fiction that should garner plenty of readers. Written in flash-back style, with little hints of a contemporary film script and old letters, we are gradually taken into the life story of 98-year-old Englishwoman Grace Bradley and her connection to the glamorous world of Riverton Manor and the Hartford family. Grace was a housemaid at Riverton as the sureties of the Hartford household were shaken from their Edwardian slumber by the horrors of WWI and the rapid social changes of the 1920s—and then torn apart by a series of terrible scandals that changed everything. With hints of Daphne du Maurier, Brideshead Revisited, Gosford Park and even that old TV stalwart Upstairs, Downstairs, this is a rich historical fiction with plenty of period charm. My only qualm was that after quite a long set-up, a number of significant events and revelations seemed to be skipped over as the story hurtled to its conclusion. But with a sequel already in the works, perhaps some of these matters will be dealt with more thoroughly in Morton’s next book, The Authoress.

This review from Bookseller & Publisher magazine is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2005, Thorpe-Bowker