"Verano de 1924. Durante una rutilante fiesta de la alta sociedad en Riverton Manor, un joven y prometedor poeta se quita la vida. Invierno de 1999. Grace Bradley, una anciana de noventa y ocho años que otrora fuera doncella en la mansión de Riverton, recibe la visita de una joven directora de cine que está rodando una película sobre aquel suicido [suicidio]. Esa visita convoca los recuerdos que durante décadas Grace había relegado a lo más profundo de su mente, incapaz de enfrentarse a ellos."-- Back cover.
In the summer of 1924 : on the eve of a glittering Society Party, by the lake of a grand English country house, a young poet takes his life. The only witnesses, sisters Hannah and Emmeline Hartford, will never speak to each other again.… (más)
kitzyl: There is a passage in The Shifting Fog which describes the relationship between Hannah and Emmeline as a "string that bends, it will eventually snap and the points will separate; if elastic, they will continue to part, further and further, until the strain reaches its limits and they are pulled back with such speed that they cannot help but collide with devastating force." In The Dark-Adapted Eye, the sisters are Vera and Eden whose inexplicably interdependent-but-destructive relationship embody the aforementioned elastic string. The story is told from the perspective of their niece who accompanies the reader on the events leading up to the devastation.… (más)
Kate Morton retrata en La casa de Riverton los últimos esplendores de la aristocracia inglesa, un mundo de convenciones y secretos atravesado por vehementes pasiones y terribles desengaños.
Verano de 1924. Durante una rutilante fiesta de la alta sociedad en Riverton Manor, una preciosa mansión a orillas de un lago, un joven y prometedor poeta se quita la vida. Las únicas testigos de ese dramático hecho, las hermanas Hannah y Emmelinen Hartford, no se volverán a hablar nunca más. Invierno de 1999. Grace Bradley, una anciana de 98 años que otrora fuera doncella en Riverton Manor, recibe la visita de una joven directora de cine que está rodando una pelÃcula sobre el suicidio del poeta.
I agreed, touched by the way little untruths told to the very young are believed so implicitly.
I am interested—intrigued even—by the way time erases real lives, leaving only vague imprints. Blood and spirit fade away so that only names and dates remain.
But of course, those who live in memories are never really dead.
It is our habit, after church, to walk the short distance to the High Street for morning tea at Maggie's. We always go to Maggie's, though Maggie herself left town with a suitcase and her best friend's husband many years ago.
I understand well the peculiar guilt of tragedy's survivors.
The young, I have learned, are embarrassed by tales of long ago. This morning he smiled over his glasses and told me how well I was looking. When I was younger, still in my eighties, vanity would have had me believe him. Now I recognize such comments as kindly expressions of surprise I'm still alive.
He will return one day, of that I've little doubt, for home is a magnet that lures even its most abstracted children. But whether tomorrow or years from now, I cannot guess. And I haven't time to wait. I find myself in time's cold waiting room, shivering as ancient ghosts and echoing voices recede.
Reluctance to begin is quick to befriend procrastination, and the view of the room below was tremendous. It is a universal truth that no matter how well one knows a scene, to observe it from above is something of a revelation.
Alone in the room, his dark eyes grave beneath a line of dark brows, he gave the impression of sorrow past, deeply felt and poorly mended.
Regardless how peripheral one's connection to calamity, it would appear that to live long enough is to be rendered an object of interest.
Wars make history seem deceptively simple. They provide clear turning points, easy distinctions: before and after, winner and loser, right and wrong. True history, the past, is not like that. It isn't flat or linear. It has no outline. It is slippery, like liquid; infinite and unknowable, like space. And it is changeable: just when you think you see a pattern, perspective shifts, an alternative version is proffered, a long-forgotten memory resurfaces.
In real life turning points are sneaky. They pass by unlabeled and unheeded. Opportunities are missed, catastrophes unwittingly celebrated. Turning points are only uncovered later, by historians who seek to bring order to a lifetime of tangled moments.
The light is bright. I feel like a bird in an oven. Hot, plucked, and watched.
"Verano de 1924. Durante una rutilante fiesta de la alta sociedad en Riverton Manor, un joven y prometedor poeta se quita la vida. Invierno de 1999. Grace Bradley, una anciana de noventa y ocho años que otrora fuera doncella en la mansión de Riverton, recibe la visita de una joven directora de cine que está rodando una película sobre aquel suicido [suicidio]. Esa visita convoca los recuerdos que durante décadas Grace había relegado a lo más profundo de su mente, incapaz de enfrentarse a ellos."-- Back cover.
In the summer of 1924 : on the eve of a glittering Society Party, by the lake of a grand English country house, a young poet takes his life. The only witnesses, sisters Hannah and Emmeline Hartford, will never speak to each other again.