La Casa de Riverton de Kate Morton
En el verano de 1924, durante una fiesta de la alta sociedad en la mansión de Riverton, un joven y prometedor poeta se quita la vida.
La primera novela de Kate Morton nos narra la historia de Grace Bradley, una anciana de 98 años que trabajó gran parte de su vida en la mansión de Riverton como doncella.
Durante el invierno de 1999, Grace Bradley, una anciana de 98 años que trabajó durante gran parte de su vida como doncella de las hermanas Hanna y Emmeline Hartford, recibe la visita de una joven directora de cine que está rodando una película sobre aquel suicidio. Esa visita hace revivir los recuerdos que durante décadas Grace había relegado a lo más profundo de su mente, incapaz de enfrentarse a ellos.
Ambientada en la decadencia de los años 20 en Inglaterra, con la guerra mundial como fondo. Novela plagada de enigmas y en la que sólo descubriremos la respuesta al principal, la clave que explica la parte más importante, en la última página.
(La receta del Blancmange, mencionado en la novela, en Comer Guapamente)
(La receta del Blancmange, mencionado en la novela, en Comer Guapamente)
Hi! I'm, Kate Morton, the author of The House at Riverton.
The House at Riverton is about a very old woman with a very old secret. She looks back across the 20th century to recall a terrible event in her youth, an event to which she was the only witness and which history has remembered incorrectly.
The very first part of the story that came to me was an image of a young man in the mid-nineteen twenties, standing on the bank of a dark lake of a grand old English country house.
In the background a jazz party was raging, fireworks were exploding in the sky, people were laughing... but
on the bank of the lake, where the noise was muffled, a gunshot rang out.
I also knew there was more to his death than met the eye.
In The House at Riverton the narrator is ninety-eight-year-old Grace Bradley. Grace is a strong character, a survivor: clear-thinking, unsentimental, independent and intelligent.
The character of Grace came to me fully formed; she was real to me from the beginning and I missed her incredibly when I finished writing.
I am lucky to have lots of friends who are a great deal older than I am, to whom I could speak and from whom I could draw traits for Grace. For instance, I got the idea for the taped letters that Grace sent to her grandson Marcus from my dear friend Herbert Davis , whose writing is so completely indecipherable that the only way he can communicate with his family in the UK is by sending them taped letters.
I also love confessional narratives and I've always wanted to write one. I'm drawn to the idea that someone might keep a secret their entire life, only to have their memories triggered by something quite unexpected.
It seemed likely to me that this might happen to a character like Grace: someone who was at the end of her life and was at the stage of laying ghosts to rest.
I knew, though, that the trigger would have to be something quite strong. After all, Grace's secret is horrific and she's kept it for a long time.
Then, one morning, I was reading the newspaper and I came across an article by Al Alvarez in which he spoke about the surreal experience of seeing an aspect of his past represented on a film.
He had been a friend to Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes and had been invited to the set of the film Sylvia to meet the actor who was playing him.I got a real insight from that article as to how strange it would be to see a part of your life reenacted in that way. In fact, Al Alvarez said it was as eerie as reading his own obituary.
The more I thought about it, the better I liked the idea of Grace being contacted by a film maker. The film itself seemed possible... After all, my character Robbie is a well-known poet who's died by his own hand. More importantly, though, it seemed likely to me that the chance to visit such a film set would prove irresistible to most people, especially someone like Grace, who is... you know... laying ghosts to rest.
The more I thought about it, the better I liked it. It seemed a great way to bring her ghosts back to haunt her, and those ghosts were beginning to take shape in my mind.
It's a wonderful feeling to create a story that people disappear into. For me, as a writer, that's the point.It's about communicating, weaving a tale, asking people to sit down and listen, and then tell them a story that lives and breathes until well after they have turned the last page.
