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Abstract: The aim of the article is to study the novel by Kate Morton “The Secret Keeper” (2012) in terms of its genre specificity. The leading genre-forming feature of the novel is photographic ekphrasis, which performs a number of functions: plot-forming, chronotopic, characterological, narrative, and motive-thematic. An unfamiliar old photograph of 1941 depicting two girls, found in the family photo album by the main character of the novel Laurel in 2011, serves as the starting point of the plot. One of the two girls is her mother, the second is a mysterious stranger. Trying to identify her personality and fill in the unknown gaps in her mother’s past, the protagonist begins a detective investigation. The theme of a photo, which combines two planes of what is depicted – the external and internal – is a cross-cutting theme of the entire novel. In the simultaneously developing plot of the late 1930s – early 1940s there unfolds before the reader the so-called “оff-screen” history of the photo, dotting all the i’s in the “small” biographical history of Laurel’s mother and other characters connected with her. Within the framework of postmodern aesthetics, photoekphrases, presented in the form of family photos, has an unlimited narrative potential, creating the so-called family mythology. Via the presence of military photos, which perform a documentary function, the novel creates a “big”, official, history of England at the beginning of World War II, which serves as a background for the development of the love affair line of the plot. Possessing an interpretive nature, photos determine the reflexivity of the protagonist, which results in unexpected discoveries and dialogue with herself and the surrounding universe. In the structure of the novel, this is explicated through a number of main themes and motifs: the motif of knowing the Other, the motif of acquiring existential knowledge, the theme of memory and acquiring one’s own identity. As a result of the study, the author of the article proves that from the point of view of formal characteristics, the genre form of K. Morton’s novel “The Secret Keeper” can be defined as a photoekphrastic novel with a subsequent clarification – the novel-photoreflection, which includes the plot elements of psychological, family, love, socio-everyday life, biographical, detective, and historical novels.

About the author(s) :

Tatiana A. Poluektova
Krasnoyarsk State Pedagogical University named after V. P. Astafiev (Krasnoyarsk, Russia)
ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8377-6554

Publication Timeline:

Date of receipt: 07.12.2022; date of publication: 30.03.2023

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