The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton - Historical Mystery Novel (2012) | Perfect for Book Clubs & Rainy Day Reading

I had a lump in my throat and pit in my stomach the entire time I was devouring this book. I've read all of Kate Morton's novels with deep satisfaction, but none of them rocked me, choked me, and held me in a mysterious state of *dread* the way this one did. I began grieving the minute I began reading. But I wouldn't put it down. It was a personal journey of self-reflection and discovery as well as a compelling story.The novel opens with a jaw-dropping vignette told with little embellishment. It reminds me of a similar birthday celebration cut short with a cake knife, the incident that changed the course of the Mortmain family's idyllic life in "I Capture The Castle." (A lovely classic coming-of-age drama in which, as in Morton's novels, transformation and redemption play large roles, and we are reminded that one can "come of age" over and over with the passage of time.) The events of that day are a climax and a begining at the same time.The story moves up and down stream from 1938 to 1941 to 1961 to 2011 without stumbling. The three main characters, Dorothy, Vivien, and Laurel, are each classic Morton tropes: the mother with a past, the friend involved in a betrayal, and the daughter trying to find the answers that will solve a mystery and reveal her mother as a woman as well as a mum. The story belongs to Dorothy Nicolson, but it's up to her daughter Laurel to tell it.As an actress, Laurel is world famous for being able to slip into the coat of someone else's skin, to reveal what lies beneath without flaying them in grotesque caricature. We all eventually "turn into" our mothers but Laurel goes about it deliberately. Morton never strays too far into Laurel's professional life, keeping her moving and the narrative with her. But casting Laurel as an actress was a deliberate choice made by the author, one of many juicy literary devices employed throughout the novel.The supporting players, the men, are just as skillfully portrayed. Dorothy's first love Jimmy is uncomplicated and wholesome, an Everyman who is so easily loveable and who loves so easily. Even Jimmy's bit-player father leaves a powerful impression based purely on his presence alone. Dorothy's only son and Laurel's baby brother Gerry stands out from the "garden" of Nicolson daughters, not because he's the boy, or a witness or detective, but because Morton describes him so beautifully, even tenderly. Henry Jenkins is the most enigmatic of the supporting cast, but for most of the book, he should be. He is the man whose death so deeply shocks Laurel as it first flutters the carefully drawn curtains blacking out Dorothy's past.As in her other novels, the passage of time, the past, heartbreak, love, mystery, secrets, and redemption are the themes each character must struggle with. Every character, not just the leads. Everyone had their cross to bear. Which of course is true for us all. We all bring our own experience to everything we read, and perhaps that's why I've been so much more profoundly moved by this novel. To have held vigil to loved ones' slow struggle, the unique labor of dying, brought so much to bloom behind the crackling backdrop of this story. It felt as though I was battling the book, as though it was dragging bits and pieces out of me just as much as I was trying to wrench it into a whole, manageable piece.Laurel's journey to uncover her mother's secrets as she lay dying didn't feel like a race against the clock, which it so easily could have, under different author's curation. It flowed smoothly, an acceptance of the ravages of time united with the determination to sweep away as many cobwebs as possible in what little of that precious commodity remained. Morton doesn't spend too much time on minutiae, as she did in The Distant Hours, dulling what could've been a sharp tale. Here in The Secret Keeper her red-ribboned blade flashes as she deftly builds characters while moving the story forward at a gripping pace. She doles out bits and pieces like rationed boiled candy, enough to keep the reader satisfied while keeping you craving for more.This is not a beautiful novel. It is spare by Morton's standards. In sticking so closely to her characters, Morton sacrifices the beautiful sense of time and place she evoked almost too heavily in her previous works. It's like she consciously worked to shed descriptive material to focus on her characters thoughts, feelings, and reactions to each other and their environment, which is risky. Her one true outlet is through the lens of Jimmy's camera, allowing the narrative to pause to describe the horrors of the Blitz. This was a wise choice, because to understand what motivated each character, the reader needs understand something of the frenzied, fatalistic pathos that flourished amongst Londoners as the bombs rained down.In Morton's novels, the Big Mystery (the why, when, where, and how) is always paralleled with the measured discovery of the Who - the revealing details of the characters' personalities, strengths, flaws, and choices. She simultaneously fleshes out characters while flushing out the truth.There are many kinds of trials, many things to survive, many types of survivors. A common theme in Morton's work, each soul is this novel must struggle to survive their own challenges, the battles wrought by their own personalities. Even in the darkest night of the Blackout, where a sliver of light was criminal, life found a way to illuminate people's greatest flaws with harsh truths and harsher lies. Life also finds a way to grant second chances, so rare and precious that some, like Dorothy Nicolson, will never stop being grateful, and will do everything she can to make that second chance count. She dedicated herself to spreading light and locking away the dark shadows of her past. She spent time in reflection and spent time in reflecting the lessons she learned. We could all stand to do the same.We may each choose to wander in our own intentional darkness, but every now and then a book like this is a mirror focused on the reader with blinding inquisition, and all you can do is let it show you what you dare to let it. It's that infamous painful progress of life, moving you forward through time, bending and twisting you into whatever or whoever you're going to become.