Returning to Riverton

on rereading favourite novels

The first time I read The House at Riverton (or The Shifting Fog as it’s known in every other country but the UK*) it was 2007. I still worked in a big glass law firm in the City of London then, ran down the station steps in heels (did I really used to have knees that functioned like that?), and if I wasn’t at work or the gym, I had my nose in a book.

I lugged my thick paperback copy of Riverton everywhere with me during that gloomy November week, reading on the packed train from Surbiton to Waterloo, reading on the Waterloo and City line, reading in the Starbucks, reading as I walked down Cannon Street - soy latte in one hand, book in the other - and not stopping until I got to my desk. How much easier that life would have been if Kindle and Audible had been a thing!**

Books have always been my world and Riverton in particular was a game-changer.

Back in 2007 there was no Downton Abbey, there was little to no interest in big old houses and the time between the wars. I can’t actually remember what was the great popular culture obsession at the time (Harry Potter mostly I think) but it had nothing to do with the secrets of crumbling buildings and the upstairs/downstairs life of times gone by (which is everywhere now of course). So Riverton came, for me at least - too young to have watched Upstairs, Downstairs and with no point of reference - completely out of left field. I’d never read anything like it before and after it was over I struggled to find anything like it to read next. (Luckily for me, though, The Forgotten Garden came out in 2008).

Reading Riverton was the first time I really realised that an author could write about anything they wanted. If I wanted to write a book (and, although I had written a very bad book in 2003, I wasn’t sure I wanted to do it again thank you very much) it didn’t have to the next ‘Ralph’s Party’ or the next Twilight, it could be anything I wanted it to be. And in a strange way it taught me that I could be anyone I wanted to be too (within reason - I was never going to be a Prima Ballerina).

I’d spent years doing everything I was supposed to do and suddenly during that dreary November I realised that I didn’t have to if I didn’t want to. Four months later I handed in my notice at that glass law firm with all the pressure and all the prestige and went to work for a little high street solicitor in Surbiton, so I could teach more yoga classes (and continue not writing a book for five more years).

Now, look, I’m not saying that Riverton made me do it. That would be ridiculous. It was something I’d been planning for a while. But it was a trigger, a catalyst, in making a life that was more in tune with what I wanted, rather than what I thought I should want.

Seventeen years have passed (shockingly) since then, I’m a published author of ten novels - five of which have been bestsellers, and life is different (both in positive and negative ways) than I could ever have imagined it being. And yet, I keep revisiting Riverton on a regular basis. I can’t stop myself. There are some books that call us back over and over again and this is one of mine.*** But each time I return it hits slightly differently. Something new stands out, a different character attracts me, a new description takes me a on train of thought that I didn’t know I was interested in.

It’s not a secret that The Mystery of Haverford House was a sort of homage to Riverton and Annie is a post-war version of Grace. And it always amazes me how the things that we end up doing are often things we didn’t think we wanted to do, long ago when those subconscious thoughts were first triggered.

Do you have a book or books that you re-read regularly? That call to you from your bookcase over and over again? Let me know in the comments!

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*I believe the reason for the title change in the UK is simply that we don’t have particularly romantic notions about fog on this damp and grey island!

**A soapbox sidenote here: For many people Kindle and Audible were lifechanging. I am one of those people and not just so I could read on the tube. Kindles are easier to hold than books when my arthritis is bad and audio is a lifesaver when chronic migraine is at its worse. To assume either are ‘not proper reading’ is elitist and ablest. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

***Other books that call me on a regular basis are Bleak House, Stephen King’s The Dark Half, Middlemarch and Barabara Vine’s A Fatal Inversion.