Kate Morton: Q & A with author of The Lake House, The Shifting Fog

When Australian author Kate Morton was just 29 her first novel The Shifting Fog was published internationally.

Since then the New York Times and internationally best-selling author has written four more novels, her lush prose continuing to draw readers in with their intricate family stories that involve dark secrets that manifest over generations and locations.

Morton recently visited Bolen Books in Victoria to give a reading of her latest novel The Lake House, which opens with the disappearance of a baby in the 1930's and moves from that time to contemporary times as the story unfolds. 

North by Northwest host Sheryl MacKay spoke to Morton after her visit to Canada.

Sheryl MacKay: All of your books start off with children or young adults at the centre of some kind of mystery. What is it that inspires you to start with that child view of the world?

Kate Morton: So much, but for me personally reading as a child was an enormous part of who I am, and I've come to believe, I have three children of my own now so I observe them constantly, I've come to believe that the things we love in our childhood become a part of us.

The things that we do in our childhood remain a part of us as we grow, and in books like mine where I'm trying to flesh out my character and make them feel real it's very important to give those people a past, a history. And childhood is that vulnerable part of ourself too, and that can often be a very appealing way into a character.

So much happens to the characters in your book and the plots are so beautifully intricate. How much research do you do to be able to use the details that make those periods seem so real?

Well I do an awful lot but then that's a little disingenuous because I absolutely love doing it, so I'm doing it all the time and I choose historical periods that interest me, so the research is no hardship.

In fact I could get easily lost in the research part of book writing, but I do months and months of it,but then I like to almost forget everything that I've learned and trust that the important bits, the bits that become real and flesh out the world of my book will rise to the surface.

Tell me about the periods of history that went into The Lake House.

Well The Lake House is about a little boy that goes missing from a big English country house party on midsummer's eve in 1933 and no trace is found, despite a thorough police investigation and his family, in devastation and despair, pack up their things and go back to London, never to return.

I chose the 1930s because unlike some periods, like say the world wars where a lot is happening and society is changing very rapidly, I wanted something in the middle that was almost a time of relative peace and tranquility, so that I could depict this beautiful country house and throw a very personal tragedy and just rock the world of my characters, rather than have it set against the backdrop of enormous social and historical change.

What got you writing in the first place?

I didn't actually start writing until I was in my early 20s, I was a voracious reader as a child, but it never occurred to me that books were written by people, I don't know where I thought they came from, it seems a bit daft now, but I had no idea.

Then two chance things happened: A friend had a book published , a real one with pages and a cover, which really impressed me to no end. And my little sister who was 14 at the time handed me a Mills & Boon story that she'd written, and it was really racy for a 14 year old sister to have written, but it had a beginning, and a middle and an end, and I was just so impressed that this story came together.

And these two things got me thinking about stories and the sort of story I might like to tell, and I bought a notebook and started plotting and began typing, and that first day of writing, it was like I was back in that complete envelopment of stories that I'd experienced when I was a girl and I read.

A lot like your character Alice, in The Lake House..

Yes, I guess so. Yes (laughs).

You studied theatre as well. Did you think maybe theatre was going to be the path instead of writing?

Yes I did for a while. I absolutely adore theatre for me there's no better feeling on earth than that moment when you're sitting in the theatre and lights are up and everyone's chatting, and then the house lights go down and there's that ding-ding-ding as people have to hurry in, and everyone settles in their seat, and there's that moment of shared anticipation before the curtains draw back and everyone gets taken on the same journey.

For a while I thought that perhaps that's where my future lay, and I did study theatre but once I started writing I realized that that was another way of telling stories that was probably far more suited to my temperament.

How do you think those theatre studies influence your writing?

I think I am a very visual person, and when I write I see a goal in my mind, which is I suppose a little like a film or like a theatre set, I do see the characters moving, and I think it's all grist to the mill in terms of storytelling and narrative and how to bring readers along, and myself too, because I am my first reader really, to keep it interesting to tell the story to make it feel for readers and if the story has sat down beside them and said: "I'm going to tell you this story, you're not going to believe it, you're not going to get up until it's finished.

Which is a big problem with your books, because that's exactly what happens!

Good, good, music to my ears! I love preventing people from doing the things they should be doing (laughs).

You set The Lake House in Cornwall and describe it so vividly in the novel, but I believe you didn't actually visit until you were proofreading the novel?

That's right, I had fallen in love with Cornwall from a far, a very long time ago, and when I came to the setting for The Lake House I wanted somewhere where I could have this pristine cultivation of my country house, but where it was never really far from a sort of a much more wild environment and Cornwall is just such a place, it's so far away from London, and it almost functions like its own island.

It has that sense of history and mystery and myth and magic and enchantment which was perfect, because of course what happened after my family lock their house and leave, 70 years passes before anybody comes back, during which the house is completely overtaken and enveloped by nature, and like a real life sleeping beauty house, just waiting for someone to come and uncover the truth and set it free, so Cornwall was just the perfect place for that.

When you finally got to see it did it live up to your imagination?

Completely, it was really so surreal it was as if I had stepped into the pages of my own book, it was incredible.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

To hear the full interview listen to the audio labelled: Australian best-selling author Kate Morton talks about how she began writing, and choosing characters and settings