Spring Reads...

The Distant Hours by Kate Morton - 4 stars ****

This book has taken me forever to read, but not due to it being boring, simply because I barely have time to pick up a book nowadays! I bought it from a charity shop as I have read Kate Morton's previous two books and loved them, although this is probably her weakest if I'm honest. This isn't due to anything other than the superiority of the others, and it is still a very pleasurable read that I would recommend.

It is predominantly about three sisters (Juniper, Serafina 'Saffy', and Persephone 'Percy' Blythe) who live in a big castle called Milderhurst in the English countryside. They have been there their entire life, through wars, deaths and drama, and are now very elderly women existing in a state of disrepair. 

A publisher called Edie is asked to write the opening to a book called The True History Of The Mudman, which was written by the sisters late father Raymond Blythe. Despite being a creative genius, he was a troubled man, who suffered with delusions and attacks of paranoia, something that was passed on to his daughter Juniper. Edie is particularly fond of the book, and she unearths a major coincidence when she discovers that her own mother was evacuated to the castle during the war. She visits the area to question the sisters about their lives, and so begins a tale that flits between past and present and from character to character in order to explain their individual stories.

This book was brilliant in that every character was completely different and had very realistic personality traits, showcasing their flaws and secrets perfectly, and the language used is quite beautiful:

'And it had seemed to Tom, as it still seemed now, that Juniper was just like that flower. An object of unfathomable perfection in a world that was breaking apart. It wasn't only the way she looked, and it wasn't only the things she said. It was something else, an intangible essence, a confidence, a strength, as if she were connected somehow to the mechanism that drove the world. She was the breeze on a summer's day, the first drops of rain when the earth was parched, light from the evening star.'

It takes a while to get into as there are so many different scenes that must be set, and because of this it is broken up into five separate parts each addressing a different person within the story.

This book really does put you through emotional turmoil. It is traumatic, moving, shocking, endearing, tragic and very intricately woven, so it leaves you connecting all the pieces until the very end, and indeed afterwards. I can't wait to read Morton's latest masterpiece!