The Clockmaker’s Daughter, written by Kate Morton and published in 2018, is a work of historical fiction that weaves romance with the paranormal to deliver a gripping masterpiece. In the first set, which takes place in 1862, is one of several settings and narratives that are intricately interwoven throughout the plot. The first character we come upon is Edward Radcliffe, a revered Victorian painter who plans a vacation at the Birchwood Manor on the Thames along with other young artists.
They have a fairly simple intent behind this planned holiday–to wind down and spend their summer honing their creative abilities. What was once intended to be a calm and relaxing summer vacation dramatically escalated into one involving a murder, a disappearance, and a missing heirloom?
In the present, we meet Elodie Winslow, a London archivist. While at work, she stumbles upon two enigmatic items that instantly capture her attention. A photograph of a seemingly surreal woman and a sketch of a house on a river. She is immediately transfixed by these two objects and has a sense of déjà vu, and feels an unexplainable connection with them.
1. “Parents and children. The simplest relationship in the world and yet the most complex. One generation passes to the next a suitcase filled with jumbled jigsaw pieces from countless puzzles collected over time and says, ‘See what you can make out of these.”
This quote pops up near the end of the book. We see the themes in the book are universal, and many can resonate with the quotes. Each of them is written from an emotive and anecdotal perspective, yet they are something that we can all relate to. The parent-child relationship is the one that we as humans form from the second we are born. This is the cornerstone of everyone’s existence and has a significant and lasting impact on our personalities.
Our parents inherit everything from their parents, including how they treat us and the values they teach us. And often, the things our parents passed down to us are unresolved and puzzling in nature. Everything—the good, the bad, and the worst—is handed on to the next of kin. It cannot be concealed from the children, regardless of whether it is a generational trauma, their personality, virtues, vices, repressed emotions, or fond memories.
As a result, we are expected to make the most out of it. We are expected to see past their foibles, learn from their shortcomings, mature into better people, and maybe solve these puzzles before passing them down to our children.
2. “Human beings are curators. Each polishes his or her own favoured memories, arranging them in order to create a narrative that pleases. Some events are repaired and polished for display; others are deemed unworthy and cast aside, shelved below ground in the overflowing storeroom of the mind. There, with any luck, they are promptly forgotten. The process is not dishonest: it is the only way that people can live with themselves and the weight of their experiences.”
Some of the crucial but seldom said truths have been masterfully put forth by Kate Morton. There are several layers to this quote, and it can be interpreted in a multitude of ways.
Human nature is incredibly complex; although much is being researched, much is unknown. Kate Morton has dubbed us “curators.” It means we have the sole power to present ourselves to the world. But it implies that we alone are able to decide how to exhibit ourselves to others. All of our accomplishments, virtues, pleasant emotions and positive life experiences are what we want to be known for since we only show off those things.
At the same time, we suppress our failures, our worst recollection of our past, the side which we do not want to show others because it could be perceived in an unfavorable way.
Morton is urging us not to feel ashamed of our decision to bury that side of ourselves, despite the fact that it may seem like we are deceiving both others and ourselves. As long as it does not jeopardize anyone, we do not owe them anything about our past or what we used to do or who we used to be. Only when we put the past behind us and focus on the future will we be able to live and survive.
3. “People value shiny stones and lucky charms, but they forget that the most powerful talismans of all are the stories that we tell to ourselves and to others.”
This quote emphasizes the power of words, the art of storytelling, and the often overlooked aspect of human existence. We devote so much of our time to pursuing materialistic goals and attributing our successes and failures to “shiny stones” or “lucky charms” that we seldom realize the power of words and stories.
Also, we recurrently take them for granted. Words have a far greater impact than materialistic possessions. These words have a much bigger influence than materialistic possessions on how we see the world and everything and everyone. Take a gander at our history. You will come to realize the favorable or unfavorable circumstances that words have sparked.
4. “It struck her now that maybe she needed to let go a bit more often. To try and, yes, occasionally to fail. To accept that life is messy and sometimes mistakes are made; that sometimes they’re not even really mistakes, because life isn’t linear, and it comprises countless small and large decisions every day.”
It’s a fairly self-explanatory quote. Each and every quote in this book is bound to strike a chord with you. We spend so much time regretting the smallest of our actions or our decisions and being so hard on ourselves for making mistakes that we forget to learn from them. But we lose sight of the fact that no one is infallible. We are wired to make mistakes.
One should not be discouraged by every small error we make. The truth is that sometimes they are perceived to be mistakes when they are just helping you to navigate your learning curve. Life is chaotically unpredictable. It would help if you remembered that every tiny mistake you made, every regrettable decision you took, every action you despised—each one of them has unwittingly contributed to your progress. So, go a little easy on yourself.
5. “Being a parent’s a breeze,” came Alan’s cheerful voice on the wind. “No more difficult than flying a plane with a blindfold on and holes in your wings.”
This quotation is playfully phrased by Morton. That’s the power of her words. They compel you to visualize them. Being a parent gets increasingly challenging day after day. The kind of parents a person has, or simply the fact that they have parents at all, strongly determines and influences their future. This quotation was intended to awaken folks who take their parents for granted. If and when you decide to become a parent yourself, that’s when you’ll truly understand the challenges and difficulties associated with being a parent. Put yourself in your parent’s shoes, and you will come to realize that they have always wanted the best for us from the moment we were born.
6. “Don’t slide down the rabbit hole. The way down is a breeze, but climbing back’s a battle.”
This quotation imparts a fundamental truth that applies to many facets of life. The rabbit hole is a metaphor from the classic “Alice in Wonderland,” wherein Alice follows a rabbit down a rabbit hole, which transports her to a magical land, and what at first appears to be a wonderful place quickly transforms into a dreadful living nightmare. Alice had to endeavor quite a lot to break free from that place. This quote teaches you that–you cannot take risks and attempt to reassure yourself that there won’t be any ramifications.
7. “The camera is ubiquitous. They all carry one now. Even as I watch, they traipse through the rooms of the house, pointing their devices at this chair or those tiles. Experiencing the world at one remove, through the windows of their phones, making images for later so that they do not need to bother seeing or feeling things now.”
A very hard-hitting and brutally honest quote. It makes you wonder how much of our time we squander on our technological devices. Do we even live in the moment anymore? Is everything we see in the captured photos truly representative of the moment it was taken? Just how accurately can a moment that was truly experienced be preserved in a photograph?
Technology is definitely a blessing, but unfortunately, it is also a curse that we are still struggling to break free of. When we spot a breathtaking sky, we instinctively get out our phones to take a picture of it. Sadly, as soon as the picture is taken, we conveniently forget about the sky and race to our phone’s gallery to check if the picture was aesthetic enough to post on social media or not. Rarely do we consider taking a brief moment to absorb and appreciate the beauty.
8. “Some nights, she lay awake wondering how she could best divide her lifetime: there simply wasn’t enough of it for a person to ensure that they learned everything they wished to know.”
This is a fitting quote for those who always wish to make the most of their time on earth. A lot of us question whether a single lifetime is enough to meet our every single need, want, and desire. Often, when it hits us that it is probably impossible to fulfill our every desire, we become discouraged from even trying to pursue it. This quest of accomplishing everything our heart desires is seldom successfully accomplished by anyone.
The first step in making the most of your life begins. With acknowledging the fact that trying to do everything without putting any forethought into it will get you nowhere. And that setting priorities is the only way you’ll ever come close to fulfilling all of your dreams.
9. “Stories have to be told, or else they die.”
This quote is succinct yet enough to get the message across. Throughout the book, you will come to learn about the power of words and how rarely we humans realize their full potential.
This book will make you fall in love with words, books, stories, and narratives; and coax you to appreciate the precious gift(the power of words) we possess. As humans, we possess a plethora of admirable traits, traits that are worthy of our attention. Our connection to the universe is reinforced via stories, which further help to preserve our heritage and commemorate our sacrifices.
10. “Time is a strange and powerful beast. It has a habit of making the impossible possible.”
You’ve probably heard the saying, “Time heals everything.” And speaking from a personal experience, it is indeed true. When faced with a difficult situation or challenged with a seemingly impossible task. We are inherently compelled to believe that it is impossible to successfully accomplish “the impossible.” You’ll inevitably come up with a plethora of methods to approach the challenge. And prevail on your own if you give it some time and be patient. This can only transpire if you give it some time instead of fretting.
11. “I have learned that one must forgive oneself the past or else the journey into the future becomes unbearable”
Whatever errors you may have committed in the past, you must forgive yourself and let go in order to go on. Instead of wasting time and energy worrying about the mistakes you’ve made and the people who have wounded you, concentrate on the future and how you’ll use your passions and talents to better the world.
No matter what you’ve been through in life, there is always room for improvement. You’re holding yourself captive and denying yourself the happiness and success you deserve when you consistently dwell on unpleasant events you’ve had, mistakes you’ve done, and how other people have mistreated you.
Everybody has gone through some form of trying time in life.
12. “She used to say that the human heartbeat was the first music that a person heard, and that every child was born knowing the rhythm of her mother’s song.”
She was very down to earth, find happiness in little things. Inside womb, When does a child start listening? Real listening starts in the first nine months of pregnancy, contrary to popular belief that it starts in school or the first two years of life.
13. “There was no going back. Time only moved in one direction. And it didn’t stop. It never stopped moving, not even to let a person think. The only way back was in one’s memories.”
The first thing to remember is that the emotion or emotions that are associated with a recollection are what matter most. You must have experienced the phenomenon where a particular smell brings back a particular memory.
14. “Love—that’s what she felt, an odd, strong, general love that seemed to flow from everything she saw and heard: the sunlit leaves, the dark hollows beneath the trees, the stones of the house, the birds that called as they flew overhead. And in its glow, she glimpsed momentarily what religious people must surely feel at church: the sense of being bathed in the light of certainty that comes with being known from the inside out, from belonging somewhere and to someone. It was simple. It was luminous, and beautiful, and true.”
Love is a concept that is challenging to analyze, quantify, and describe. Love is the subject of great literature, wonderful music, and great philosophical thought. Love is a strong emotion with no one correct definition because it fits each individual individually. Love is a powerful feeling that may be felt in many different ways, whether it is between family, friends, or romantic partners.
15. “Stories have to be told or else they die.”
We all have beautiful experiences in our life, people should write about them and let people know how beautiful life is. And how important is to make memories.
