The Distant Hours (book review)

“A life, Miss Burchill, a human life, is bracketed by a pair of events: one’s birth and one’s death. The dates of those events belong to a person as much as their name, as much as the experiences that happen in between.” This statement, one directed at the book’s protagonist during a prolonged and earth-shattering confession, may as well be a central point of description in a plot summary for “The Distant Hours”, the third and most intricately layered novel yet from Australian author Kate Morton. It is literary fiction and mystery together, the formation and arrangement of the story’s building blocks and lead-ins to the numerous secrecies within its pages painstaking and incredibly rewarding.

Edith Burchill loves books; hers is a long and somewhat guilty affair that began with her confiscation of the local library’s copy of “The True History of the Mud Man”, a macabre tale penned by famed author Raymond Blythe. Blythe once inhabited the resplendent Milderhurst Castle, a grand property now suffering from neglect, unpleasant memories, and the curious and intensely private natures of his three elderly daughters (Persephone aka Percy, Seraphina aka Saffy, Juniper). Edith’s occupation with a small publishing house and obsession with the Mud Man and Milderhurst expands when her mother Meredith, a transitory resident of the castle during WWII, receives a letter that opens many old and creaking doors, their squeaks and groans the songs of confession of which Meredith speaks (“Ancient walls that sing the distant hours”). Of particular interest to Edith is her mother’s former friendship with Juniper, a woman rumored to have gone mad after her fiancée failed to show for dinner one fateful stormy evening. Contracted to write a piece on the Blythe family, Edith visits the castle and has an encounter with Juniper that shakes her to the core; when seeking answers as to the reasons behind Juniper’s psychosis, she is rebuffed time and again by the unyielding Percy. She experiences much of the same when asking her mother about Milderhurst, the strong intent on everyone’s part to keep their secrets about the place only encouraging Edith to dig ever deeper for the truth. What she finds out will be the light upon the myriad shadows surrounding the Blythe family, including the dark and tragic inspiration behind the tale she so loves.

Morton is an absolutely exceptional author, her stories rich with complicated and fascinating characters, places full of intrigue and tragedy, and resonating with powerful themes. There is many a veil of secrecy in “The Distant Hours”, each with its fine fabric of lies and concealment expertly and tightly woven by its makers. There is jealousy, rage, and infidelity, all of which bear seed in the Mud Man’s morbid conception. There are the intangible and indivisible ties of family, bonds so strong they threaten to break yet mend themselves time and again through unconditional love. There is romantic love and the heartache that comes in tandem. There is madness, death and the ineradicable annals of one’s own personal history. Though there is no possibility for one character’s reparation in wrongdoing, there is still relief and forgiveness to be had in confession, that things have been set right at long last, giving the reader a sense of closure. Morton keeps this all together with a story that ebbs and flows, her build-ups sometimes a small torment but always keeping the reader on the edge, hungry for discovery and swooning over her concise, sincere and reflective delivery.

I have give to credit for a fascinating story within a story here: after reading the “excerpt” from The True History of the Mud Man that is used as the opening, I found myself every bit as entranced as Edith by the story; I felt as though it were an actual existing book, what with all the compelling history Morton attaches to it, and it made me wish that it was real so that I could read it in its entirety. She says this of its inception: “The portion of Raymond's Blythe's rather spooky story came to me in a flash, on a cold, wet winter's evening. I was alone in a cabin in the forest, mist had rolled up the mountain, and I was sitting by the window watching night fall. All of a sudden I was struck by an image of a young girl perched upon a bookcase at the top of a castle tower. She was looking over a dark landscape, dreaming about her future, when down below her, deep in the muddy moat, something began to stir. I raced to my computer and wrote the prologue in a single sitting. All the other pieces of the puzzle slotted into place once I found my Mud Man.” Color me a deep and brilliant shade of intrigued. Perhaps at some point she will consider penning this story in its entirety as a nice side project for her most devoted fans.

Bottom line: A captivating read from beginning to end, “The Distant Hours” will sing of your time spent reading it with each page turned in eagerness, its swan dive into the idea of “if these walls could talk” having the most curious of our lot wondering freely on the spirits that whisper their secrets within each ancient edifice, and whether or not they can be heard if we listen hard enough.