Thursday, July 25, 2013

Katherine Webb's A Half Forgotten Song, a haunting mystery set in 1930s and modern Dorset

This wasn't a novel that caught me right away.  The prose felt languid and almost dreamlike in the beginning, in keeping with the slow-to-change pacing of daily life in the seaside community in Dorset where it's set. After the first hundred pages or so, though, I found myself caught in its web and put it down only with difficulty.  

A Half Forgotten Song tells two intertwining stories spaced over 70 years apart, and the seamless transitions heighten the sense that the past still exerts a strong hold on the present.

Zach is the owner of a failing art gallery in Bath who's feeling listless after his ex-wife takes their daughter to live in America. When he travels to the village of Blacknowle in Dorset in search of material for a book he's writing on bohemian artist Charles Aubrey, who summered there with his French-Moroccan mistress and two daughters in the '30s, Zach feels he's struck gold after he meets an elderly woman.

Dimity Hatcher was once the subject of many Aubrey portraits, and she informs Zach that she and Charles had had a grand love affair years ago. Dimity doesn't trust many people, but after Zach passes a test she gives him, she decides to tell him some of her story (but not nearly all).

Back in the pre-war years, the girl nicknamed "Mitzy" Hatcher sees a new world open up before her when the Aubreys come to vacation in Blacknowle, attracted by its beauty and quaintness. However, what the Aubreys see as old-fashioned charm is, for Mitzy, depressing poverty. Neglected by her alcoholic mother, who crafts herbal remedies and makes extra money as a prostitute, Mitzy is already an outcast in her community and quickly latches onto the Aubreys particularly when Charles's artistic gaze falls upon her.

Despondent as Zach is, he doesn't run away from or even question some very odd circumstances he encounters in Blacknowle, such as when Mitzy asks him for some things that would seem like obvious ingredients for a witch's spell. (His potential love interest, Hannah Brock, also lives in absolute squalor; there's a reason behind it, but still.) His lack of reaction requires some suspension of disbelief.

However, this added creepiness sets the right tone for gradual revelations of the darkness in Mitzy's past, and a multi-layered tale about an intense artist, an impressionable young woman, and how a girlhood crush can spiral into an unhealthy, destructive obsession. The revelations at the end are unexpected, astonishing, and definitely worth waiting for.

A Half Forgotten Song was published in May by Harper ($14.99, pb, 496pp).  I read it two weekends ago from the UK edition, pictured above, which I'd purchased online last year (Orion, 2012, £7.99).

11 comments:

  1. And now I have yet another book to add to my TBR pile!

    Thanks for the review, Sarah.

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    1. Gothic sagas like this are the books I enjoy reading more than almost anything else!

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  2. Sounds really good. Another one to note down.

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    1. I can recommend the two of Webb's I've read so far - this one and The Legacy.

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  3. I appreciate your honesty about its slow first 100 pages. Too many book reviews on the Internet, particularly in book blogs, always praise a book and do their readers a disservice.

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    1. Thanks for your comment. The slow build took a while to get used to, but it did the trick in creating an atmosphere of mystery.

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  4. I am so excited about this one. I have her other two books on my TBR pile and should probably start with those first! :)

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    1. The Legacy (her first book) was very enjoyable too - she's good at writing about quirky characters and how family dynamics can twist over time. I thought the concept behind The Legacy was unique, with an heiress from Oklahoma marrying into a wealthy British family. They're all standalones, so you can start with whichever one you'd like!

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    2. I have to echo Sarah's comments about The Legacy -- super fun.

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  5. I cannot wait to read this one! It sounds excellent and I really enjoyed her novel, The Unseen. Thanks for the great review!

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    1. The Unseen is one I haven't read yet - thanks for the recommendation!

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