The Hidden Garden (Kate Morton)

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The Forgotten Garden (Engl. The Forgotten Garden ) is a novel by Australian Kate Morton , who in 2008 Allen & Unwin in Crows Nest / Australia appeared.

The homely-gruesome place, which gives the title, is located on a rock spur above the south coast of Cornwall . The author admits that the text is reminiscent of “ The Secret Garden ”. Even as a child she loved Burnett's book for young people. Parallels to Brontë's two works “ Jane Eyre ” and “ Sturmhöhe ” are evident.

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In 1913, Hamish Andrews, harbor master in Maryborough , northeast Australia , picks up four-year-old Ivory Mountrachet at a berth and takes her home. Apparently the child arrived all alone on the last ship from England. Since Ivory neither reveals her name nor carries a document, Hamish names his new child Nell (Nellie) Andrews. Nell grew up in the Andrews family. In 1947 their daughter Lesley is born. In 1961, Nell's first husband, Al, dies. Lesley's daughter Cassandra was born in 1966. The girl grows up with her grandmother Nell. Her flighty mother Lesley had run away with a certain Len. Abandoned by her mother, Cassandra later begins studying art and eventually marries Nicholas (Nick). Leo is born. Husband and son are killed in a traffic accident. After Nell's death, Cassandra inherits a house in Tregenna / Cornwall. The coastal town is about 30 kilometers west of Polperro at the western exit of the English Channel . The will in question from 1981 was drawn up after Nell had traveled by plane. The woman had already bought her English birthplace in 1975 after trying to find out where she came from. The investigation was not completely successful. In 2005 the new house owner Cassandra repeated her grandmother's expedition, found a new partner in England in the local Christian Blake and, together with the former doctor, gradually revealed most of the remaining secrets.

On the occasion of her 21st birthday, Hamish had confessed to his "daughter" that she was a stranger. After Hamish's death, Nell had investigated her life story in London and at Cliff Cottage high above Blackhurst Manor, close to the village of Tregenna. Thirty years later, the granddaughter Cassandra investigates the same locations: Nell Andrews - actually Ivory Mountrachet (see above) - was the daughter of the storybook author Eliza Makepeace and the painter Nathaniel Walker. The destitute Nathaniel, a New York-born son of immigrant Poles, had married Rose Mountrachet. Rose was the only daughter of Lord Linus Mountrachet, Lord of Blackhurst Manor and his wife, Lady Adeline Mountrachet. To the chagrin of the young woman, Rose and Nathaniel's marriage remains childless. Rose had swallowed a thimble as a child and had been excessively x-rayed by the attending physician using the X-rays discovered in 1895, thereby rendering it sterile.

Lord Linus had loved his sister Georgiana very much. A year before the Lord's wedding to commoner Adeline Langley, the sister had run away with a seaman who had worked in the Port of London. The twins Eliza and Sammy were born on September 1, 1888. Lord Linus had hired Henry Mansell to kill the seaman. He has the same well-paid Mr. Mansell search for the sister Georgiana in London and later all over Europe. Mansell is unsuccessful, but in 1900 he finds Eliza in London under the thumb of the greedy shopkeeper Mrs. Swindell. Mansell kidnaps Eliza from the London gutter and leads her to his client. Sammy had previously died in an accident on London Street. Eliza grows up with Rose. When her cousin Nathaniel marries, Eliza retreats to Cliff Cottage and tends the hidden garden in the immediate vicinity. Since Rose does not get pregnant, the unfortunate woman and her mother Adeline asks the cousin for a love service. Eliza should let Nathaniel impregnate her and hand over the child to the "mother" Rose. Said and done. Eliza does not leave the now high walled Cliff Cottage during pregnancy and gives birth to Ivory in 1909. At Adeline's instigation, Nathaniel and Rose plan to move to New York with Ivory. Thus the child would be withdrawn from the birth mother once and for all. Before they intended to move overseas, however, the couple died in a railway accident in Scotland in 1913. Eliza takes the opportunity and flees from Cornwall to London with her daughter. The destination is a ship to Australia. Eliza brings Ivory on board and quickly seeks Mrs. Swindell. In their house, she has hidden a precious brooch in a crooked attic room. After the successful recovery of the family heirloom, Eliza is kidnapped by Mansell to Blackhurst Manor. The ship sets sail with Ivory. On the carriage ride to Cornwall, Eliza is killed trying to escape. Together with Mansell, Adeline buries the dead woman in the hidden garden together with the brooch.

Together with her good friend, the aforementioned Christian Blake, Cassandra came across what was buried in 1913 in 2005. Christian, born in Tregenna in 1964, had already made the acquaintance of Cassandra's grandmother Nell alias Ivory in 1975 in the hidden garden. The happy ending is inevitable. Cassandra and Christian become a couple.

Form and interpretation

Storylines - mainly from 1913, 1975 and 2005 - are developed alternately. The downright detective work of Nell alias Ivory and Cassandra is accompanied by errors and causes the hopeless reader confusion. For example, on the ship's voyage to Australia, in the presence of the ship's doctor, it is rumored that the mother of the four-year-old died off the South African coast. Half-truths are uttered - Nell's birth parents are Rose and Nathaniel Walker - and spun out: Rose was pregnant.

Kate Morton also lays several wrong leads. For example, the reader must largely assume that not Eliza but the domestic servant Mary is the surrogate mother.

The language of bestselling author Kate Morton is sometimes strange - for example, when she talks about “rules of behavior” or about “blotching”. Instead of a semicolon, a period is used. The novel closes with an agrammatism.

Editions in German

Used edition

  • Kate Morton: The Hidden Garden. Novel. Translated from the English by Charlotte Breuer and Norbert Möllemann. Weltbild, Augsburg 2012, ISBN 978-3-8289-9538-3 . (Licensor of the German-language edition: Diana Verlag, Munich 2009)

Web links

In English

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ see also in eng. Allen & Unwin
  2. ↑ eng. Crows Nest, Queensland
  3. ↑ Edition used, p. 4 above
  4. ↑ see interview from April 7th, 2009 under item "Weblinks"
  5. ↑ eng. The Forgotten Garden
  6. ↑ see also Tregenna Castle
  7. ↑ see map sketch in the edition used, p. 8
  8. ↑ eng. Manor
  9. ↑ eng. 1913 Ais Gill rail accident
  10. ↑ Edition used, p. 287, 3rd Zvu and p. 306, 1st Zvu
  11. ↑ Edition used, p. 626, 1. Zvo
  12. ↑ Edition used, p. 635, 1. Zvu