Customer Reviews

Lost Garden

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is much better book than the Amazon reviewer gives it credit for. Perhaps, because this is such a personal novel (with respect to the experiences of the main character) and one that those who survived the Battle of Britain might connect with deeply, there are aspects of it that are lost on some readers and reviewers.

My parents were such Battle of Britain survivors, having lived in London during the bombing. And my father was an avid gardener. And, my mother had a fling with an American GI (as opposed to Canadian in this book). That's the personal aspect that resonates with me, and I am deeply thankful to Helen Humphreys for capturing all the pain, love, longing, and faith that these real people experienced.

But enough of that... this book is a small prose miracle. Others here have stated and summarized the main plot, so I won't repeat it. The idea of gardening, of nurturing both the earth and one's soul is not a particularly novel (pardon the pun) idea. What IS different here is the magnificent way in which Humphreys tells this story in the first person (not as easy at is seems) with such passion, poetry, and compassion.

Humphreys' way with words, with describing the gardens, the pain of loss, the longing of love unrequited, the miracle of growth, is stunning. "Grief moves us like love. Grief is love, I suppose. Love as a backward glance." These words by our heroine, Gwen, are as bittersweet as the novel, as bittersweet as her love affair with roses, as bittersweet as her unspoken attraction to Capt. Raley, one of the Canadian soldiers billeted nearby.

As she says early in the book, in one of these backward glances, "I sit in this rocking train carriage, years later, words floating around me, wisping down in thin, grey threads. Nothing I can hold in my hands. Smoke, these words are smoke."

Gwen recalls overhearing Jane, another of the young woman employed to grow food for the war, read aloud from Wolff's "To the Lighthouse" to one of the Canadian soldiers. As Gwen puts it, "and when I hear that voice [Jane's] polishing those words so that they shine inside me..." Well, all I can say is that Helen Humphreys' words also truly shine.

It's 1941 and London is burning. Gwen Davis (35 and a horticulturist formerly seeking a cure for parsnip canker) must now flee the city she loves, so she's volunteered to lead a team of girls from the Women's Land Army in growing vegetables for the war effort at an old country estate. The estate is beautiful, but it soon becomes apparent the girls have better things to do than plant potatoes -- they have a company of Canadian soldiers billeted in the old estate house right in their backyard. The soldiers are commanded by the bitter, secretly terrified Captain Raley, who immediately snares Gwen's long lost fancy. While the girls dance with the soldiers, she tracks Raley down, seeking to cement a relationship destined to haunt her. Neither can she forget the novelist Virginia Woolf, who's tragic death has left her with fantasized fan letters she can never send. But it's her discovery of a secret love garden hidden behind the orchard, long overgrown and lost to whomever planted it, that truly leads Gwen to explore her dormant longings. While her best friend, Jane, is fiercely trying to keep her missing fiance alive by remembering him and while the land army girls are depicting their former lives in chalk on blackout curtains, Gwen is tracing the meanings of the flowers in her lost garden in search of what she knows of love.

THE LOST GARDEN is truly a beautiful book -- straightforward and yet told with such sensitivity and understanding it's impossible not to get caught up in it. Gwen's idea of a drunken orgy is to get "very sincere" and start rhapsodizing on plants, and her incredibly straight view of love and life makes the poignancy all the stronger. Captain Raley's repressed fear, knowing he is just waiting to be sent out to die, had me crying by the end of the book. In fact, I cried all the way through the last chapter. Though Gwen never gets to know the land girls well (she secretly names them after potatoes), Jane and Raley and Gwen herself are excellently developed. I'm the sort of reader who thrives on constant action, yet this touching little book had me from the first word and never let go.

A brilliant portrayal of love in a time of war, THE LOST GARDEN is a literary arrangement I could not recommend more highly.

I loved her Afterimage which is in my top ten favorite books. I like her prose in both the books, it's sort of poetic and lyrical but uncomplicated. (Although, I liked it better in Afterimage. In this book, at times it sounds a bit pretentious like she is trying too hard to sound deep and flowery but that's just a few places in the beginning.) She has a way with words that evoke an incredible imagery when you read it. I get caught up in her expression of the language that I don't even care if the plot seemed a bit contrived at certain places.

This book is a quick read...it's rather short.

Like a previous reviewer mentioned, Gwen beings to piece together the story the garden has to tell, which is also her own story...of Love, Longing and Loss.

She runs a few metaphors and threads describing past events throughout the book, alongside the main setting, and by the time the book ends, the connection is thrown in and you realize their purpose. They throw a little insight into the main character's thought process and complete the theme - it is much better done subtly this way. Like with the Virginia Woolf thread in this book. It goes with the overall theme of lost chances. The thread with Gwen's mother is also about Loss, though a bit over-dramatic. The thread with the white roses and Raley are tied symbolically by Love. The threads with David's longing for his wife and the Genus and Jane's topiary Angel...the symbolism of longing.

If somebody recommended a book to me about gardens, I would have found it drab and boring. And I especially don't read many stories with a war backdrop. I'm not wired to relate to or pick up a book like that. But I'm so glad I read this one. Another reviewer has said, "Anyone who enjoys a creative expression will like the book." I will add that, anyone who normally doesn't care for it should definitely read it. You will start smelling the roses.

Helen Humphreys is nothing less than a superb story-teller. The tone of this W.W.II drama is lyrical, wistful and bold, and her characters bend and sway in the nostalgia she so openly releases. It is narrated by Gwen Davis a single 30-something horticulturist who joins the war effort by volunteering to lead a group of girls in growing potatoes on a deserted estate in the English countryside. Used to working in a solitary lab environment, Gwen has to face her shyness and lack of self-confidence as she forms her relationships with the girls in her crew. Her amateur gardeners are young and energetic and would rather be flirting with the soldiers who are also stationed at the estate while awaiting deployment. One of the girls, however, is different... Jane. Since Jane's fiancé has been declared missing in action she's been slowing fading away, just barely holding onto that fragile thread of hope. Jane and Gwen befriend one another, as well as two of the soldiers staying in the estate house. Then Gwen finds the best companion of all... a secret garden hidden within the grounds. With her knowledge of horticulture and some research into the inhabitants of the estate, Gwen beings to piece together the story the garden has to tell... and finds that it is telling her story as well.

If someone would've told me that I'd learn quite a lot about gardening techniques while reading this book, I might have passed it up, because I wouldn't have realized that there is a beautiful and sensitive language gardens can speak. I think any reader who enjoys creative expression will find they can relate to this story. Humphreys delivers her tale with perfect timing, swiftly wrapping-up after the climax, yet leaving just enough loose threads to keep you thinking about the characters long after the last page has been turned.

Helen Humphreys' The Lost Garden is a beautiful little gem of a novel, a quick and wonderful read about one woman's perfect moment and time and how it quickly eluded her. Gwen Davis is a lonely woman in the early days of World War II in London when she volunteers to lead a group of women in a war-effort farming experiment on an abadoned estate in the British countryside. She is devastated to leave London, devastated by the war and yet her experiences away from London turn out to be the most rewarding of her life. She finally forms a meaningful friendship and begins to fall in love with one of the Canadian soldiers briefly stationed at the estate. Gwen reflects on the nature of love and happiness, both in her life and in the lives of those around her. This is an excellent, if short, rewarding novel. Enjoy.

I was really excited about reading this book because the premise sounded so promising! A bunch of elements that really intrigued me, especially a lost garden and the setting being the war era, which holds a strange fascination for me.

This is a beautiful and well-written novel. The prose is flowery but flows well; the author is indeed a gifted writer. There were some parts of the story line for which I just didn't care, but overall I enjoyed it.

One thing I liked most about this novel was the detailed descriptions of the suffering of London during the bombings. As Americans I think we are rather ignorant of how much the people of our mother land suffered, and this was definitely eye-opening. I appreciated the perspective.

It's short and a quick read. I recommend it.

This is a quick read and is full of beautiful language and imagery. The characters are interesting and the discovery of the garden keeps the reader engaged. The intersection of real books is an interesting technique, gardeners and readers of Woolf won't be disappointed. The end comes rather suddenly, and leaves you wanting more. The garden's function in the end and the narrator's relationship to it is rather disappointing

I rarely cry when I read anymore. But I cried almost through the whole last chapter. This is a beautiful book of love lost, memory captured and the beauty of gardens. I recommend it.

This was the first book of Helen Humphrey's that I read, and for me, it's been the best. As an avid reader of WWII stories (fiction and non) I enjoyed this little book from the first page on....the plot of the story is listed already in several reviews, so I won't go into those details, except to say that for me, Gwen became very "real" - her hopes and her disappointments. There is a portion of one review of this book inside which reads something like, "You will never again look at peonies in the same way...", and I never have. A beautiful little book, highly recommended.

This is the story of a shy horticulturist in England during W.W. II, who leaves her labortory to direct a team of Land Girls, who grow vegetables for the war effort. Her personal growth is perceived and entwined with her relationship with garden plants. A pleasure to read for anyone who loves plants. Suzanne Love Harris