About this deal
This September we’ll be discussing Kate Morton’s debut novel, The House at Riverton; a multimillion-copy bestselling thriller and love-story. I think many people who aren't familiar with such a strict class system, notably Americans and Australians like Morton, are also intrigued by the thought that there could have been a whole class of people whose unalterable life purpose was to serve others. Winter 1999 : Grace Bradley, 98, onetime housemaid of Riverton Manor, is visited by a young director making a film about the poet’s suicide. Though the climactic revelation feels contrived, Morton's characters and their predicaments are affecting, and she recreates the period with a sure hand. I fell deeply in love with books as a child and believe that reading is freedom; that to read is to live a thousand lives in one; that fiction is a magical conversation between two people - you and me - in which our minds meet across time and space.
For decades, Grace Reeves has kept secret the truth of a poet's violent death by the lake at Riverton House in Oxfordshire. Later she earned first-class honours for her English Literature degree at the University of Queensland, during which time she wrote two full-length manuscripts (which are unpublished) before writing the story that would become the 2006 novel The House at Riverton.Another theme in The House at Riverton is that of inheritance -- the way we are bound to our families through various items that are passed between the generations. Ghosts awaken and memories, long consigned to the dark reaches of Grace’s mind, begin to sneak back through the cracks.
Unless otherwise stated, this discussion guide is reprinted with the permission of Washington Square Press. It was Hannah, in her wedding dress, mud splattered across the front, clinging to the appliquéd roses. Grace’s flashbacks are nicely interwoven with the present, and, as always, descriptions of life in service underscore how different society was a hundred years ago.I truly developed a big love for everyone involved at Riverton Manor, and I absolutely just need a movie or TV-Show based on this fantastic book! Hannah decided to run away with Robert and she left Grace a letter written in shorthand and a suicide note for her sister Emmeline.