Kate Morton, The House at Riverton

"Last night I dreamed I went to Manderley again". No -- that's Rebecca. "Last November I had a nightmare. It was 1924 and I was at Riverton again". That's it -- the opening of Kate Morton's novel. Intertextuality, I hear you say. Yes, probably. But this book does not, after the opening sentence, allude in any noticeable way to Daphne Du Maurier's novel. Of course it is set, like Rebecca, in a large country house, but there, I think, the similarity ends, although Du Maurier is one of the authors Morton says inspired her: other sources of inspiration,perhaps more noticeable, include The Remains of the Day, Gosford Park, and Upstairs Downstairs. But this should not detract from Kate Morton's achievement, or from our enjoyment of this skilfully constructed novel. Grace, the narrator, is in her late 90s and, aware that her time is running out, decides to make a series of tapes for her grandson Marcus. This young man, a writer himself, should, she believes, have the opportunity of finding out about her life, but also about the lives of the family with whom she has been intimately connected for a large part of her life. For Grace, aged fourteen, was sent to work as a housemaid for the wealthy Hartford family at Riverton House, just as her own mother had done before her. As she grows up, she becomes increasingly close to Hannah, the older of the two young girls who live at the house, who is more or less her own contemporary, and eventually, when Hannah marries, Grace becomes her lady's maid. But many secrets lie beneath the apparently placid surface of both their lives, some of which are hinted at in places throughout the novel, others of which are revealed with quite startling effect towards the end. The double time-frame -- Grace in her 90s and Grace as a young girl --makes for quite a complex structure which Kate Morton handles well. I had a few quibbles -- I'd like to have seen a bit more development of Grace's discovery of her parentage, which certainly has repurcussions, though these are not really touched on here. But for a first novel, which I take this to be, it is extremely impressive.