“Homecoming” by Kate Morton is literary fiction featuring dual timelines, with a touch of mystery and a dash of family saga.
“Home is where the heart is, and the heart can be a dark and damaged place.”
In 1959, a family in Australia is found dead under suspicious circumstances, the youngest child missing. In 2018 a woman is just learning about this family history that her grandmother wanted to keep secret from her. Not everything was answered satisfactorily back then, but can she put all the pieces together now?
“There was no clear corollary between the two, and yet the first and firmest human addiction is to narrative. People seek always to identify cause and effect and then arrive at meaning…”
The overall story was pretty good (the mystery, the family tensions, the relationships), but honestly the choice to present much of the earlier timeline as a true crime book being read by characters within the story made for some boring reading. It wasn’t until around page 400 that things became more engaging.
“There was a truth observed by all good preachers, leaders, and salesmen: tell a good story, tell it in simple language, tell it often. That’s how beliefs and memories were formed. It was how people defined themselves, in a reliance upon the stories about themselves that they were told by others.”
Decent story, good prose, presentation was a swing and a miss (for this reader, at least)
Jessica Crawford 