The Lake House by Kate Morton, 2016.

Long and complex novel set in multiple time periods and various locations: Cornwall 1913, 1914, 1931, 1932 and 1933; London 1911, 1931, 1941, 2003 and 2004; Oxford 2003. 

The story plays out over three generations: Constance deSheil and her husband Henri; their daughter, Eleanor and her husband, Anthony Edevane and their daughters, Alice Edevane and her sisters, Deborah and Clementine. In more up-to-date times (2003) a modern life detective Sadie Sparrow, on enforced leave from her job, decides to investigate a cold case whilst staying with her grandfather, Bertie, in Cornwall. The case involves the tragic disappearance of a little boy in the summer of 1933 in a house not far from her grandfather’s home. The house is called the Lake House and exists in a state of suspended animation where everything was left as it was when the family left that long ago summer. The little boy was the only son of Eleanor and Anthony and Alice’s brother.

Alice Edevane in 2003 is a very successful writer of detective stories living in London, has never married and has a personal assistant called Peter. Alice, even at 86, has to let the self-deception that has clouded her vision all her life, roll away so that she can see the past clearly as a startling truth about her mother is revealed to her.

Alice’s mother, Eleanor, is the emotional and moral centre of the novel as the reader realises when the story is finished and the plot unravels. She ultimately decides on the right thing to do after considering everybody involved, indeed the main perspective of the book is a female one.

 Eleanor’s mother, Constance, and the death of her first baby, by the tangling of the umbilical cord round its neck, provide a sub-plot; and the role of Mr Llewellyn and his connection to the family is explained toward the end of the novel. He writes a book about Eleanor as a child called ‘Eleanor’s Doorway’. Apparently the author only realised how the story would end when she was two thirds of the way through the book. 

The main themes of the novel are: missing children (in both senses of the phrase); abandoned houses; abandonment generally; dogged determination and the role of the detective; mistaken identities; adolescence (Alice and her sisters); effects of the war (shell shock and deserters); the hidden depths of family histories. There is also a helpful librarian who provides Sadie with newspaper article, maps and plans during the initial stages of her investigation. 

It is not surprising that this book, usually described as a page turner, has been just as successful as the author’s previous work.