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The Illegal Gardener (Greek Village Book 1) by [Sara Alexi]

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Sara Alexi

The Illegal Gardener (Greek Village Book 1) Kindle Edition

by Sara Alexi (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4,068 ratings

Book 1 of 19: Greek Village

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Lift yourself, fill yourself full of hope and compassion!!

The Illegal Gardener is a moving, poignant story about life's rare encounters which knock us off our path, and elevate our very existence.

Driven by a need for some control in her life, Juliet sells up on impulse and buys a run down farmhouse in a tiny Greek village, leaving her English life behind. Her boys have grown and she has finally divorced her bullying husband. This is her time now.

Whilst making her new home habitable, Juliet discovers she needs a sturdy helping hand with the unruly and neglected garden. Unwilling to share her newfound independence with anyone, but unable to do all the work by herself, she reluctantly enlists casual labour.

Aaman has travelled to Greece from Pakistan illegally. Desperate to find a way out of poverty, his challenge is to find work and raise money for the harvester his village urgently need to survive.

What he imagined would be a heroic journey in reality is fraught with danger and corruption. Aaman finds himself in Greece, and with each passing day loses a little more of himself as he survives his new life as an immigrant worker; illegal, displaced, unwanted and with no value. Hungry and stranded, how will he ever make it back home to Pakistan?

In what begins as an uncomfortable exchange, Juliet hires Aaman to be her gardener, but resents the intrusion even though she needs the help. Aaman needs the work and money but resents the humiliation.

In spite of themselves, as the summer progresses, they get to know one another and discover they have something in common. Pieces of their lives they have kept hidden even from themselves are exposed, with each helping the other to face their painful past.

Will Juliet and Amaan finally let each other in? And what will be the outcome of this improbable conjoining of two lost souls?

Print length

290 pages
Language

English
Sticky notes

On Kindle Scribe
Publication date

November 30, 2013
File size

1447 KB
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Word Wise

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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Sara Alexi was born in Oxford, England. She has traveled widely and now spends much of her time in a tiny rural village in the Peloponnese, in Greece, where she is (very slowly!) renovating a ruined stone farmhouse, whilst observing the Greek way of life and absorbing the culture, to enrich her vision for both writing and painting.

Sara began writing later in life. In school English lessons were a time of confusion, books indecipherable hieroglyphics. Dyslexia was not well understood then and no support was available. The joy of reading and writing were canceled by the teacher's red pen ...

Despite her dyslexia Sara qualified as a psychotherapist and ran her own practice for years. Her artistic nature was, at that time, confined to painting and she exhibited widely.

In a casual conversation with a client she discovered that Agatha Christie, Jules Verne and Hans Christian Andersen were all dyslexic, and Sara's perspective changed. The world of fiction opened to her with this shift in perception and she has been a prolific writer ever since.

Her 'Greek Village Series' has been very well received and provides a keenly observed, compassionate insight into the Greek people and culture, and the human condition in general. Watch this space for the next in the series, coming soon!

Follow Sara: facebook.com/authorsaraalexi

Review

'Reminiscent of Remains of the Day.'

'A good tale well told. Shades of Steinbeck and Bradbury.'

'The author has huge potential and if she keeps writing and developing like this then I wouldn't be at all surprised to see her name on a future Man Booker list!'

'Sensitive with beautifully crafted characters that you really cared about.'

'I was captivated from the start unable to put the book down.' --This text refers to the paperback edition.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B008LMT78U
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Oneiro Press; 1st edition (November 30, 2013)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ November 30, 2013
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 1447 KB
Simultaneous device usage ‏ : ‎ Unlimited
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 290 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #314,110 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #122 in General Greece Travel Guides
- #564 in Travel (Kindle Store)

Customer Reviews:
4,068 ratings

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Sara Alexi's 'Greek Village Series' has been very well received and provides a keenly observed and compassionate insight into the Greek people and culture from the years she lived there, and a rare view of what makes up the human condition that she acquired as a psychotherapist.

The illegal Gardener

Black Butterflies

The Explosive Nature of Friendship

The Gypsy’s Dream

The Art of Becoming Homeless

In The Shade of The Monkey Puzzle Tree

A Handful of Pebbles

The Unquiet Mind

Watching The Wind Blow

The Reluctant Baker

The English Lesson

The Priest Well

A Song Amongst the Orange Trees

The Stolen Book

A Stranger in the Village

The Stolen Book

The Rush Cutter Legacy

Saving Septic Cyril

Being Enough

A Wander Through the Village - The Greek Village Handbook

A Stranger In the Village

A Self Effacing Man

The Piano Raft

The House Keeper

An Island Too Small

The Greek Village Cookery Book or The Short and Happy Tale of Pippo Lampo

The Village Idiots part I, II and III

The Other Daughter

A Very English Christmas.

The Greek Village Colouring Book.

Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5

4,068 global ratings

5 star		59%
4 star		28%
3 star		8%
2 star		3%
1 star		2%

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Top reviews from the United States

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Michelle

Kept Me Reading

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 31, 2023

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Loved the characters in this book. But I would've prefered to start with book 1 in the Greek series rather than reading 15 & 16 for Aaman's story. This is book 15 apparently. It is still really good as a stand alone book. However, I'm still unsure as to whether I will read further books by this author. I don't generally like books in series.

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Kristin Hilltown

An inspiring story, beautifully written…

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 19, 2022

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I found this to be a compelling book with heartwarming and relatable characters. It’s a easy read that I finished in a couple of days. It’s the type of story that reminds you to appreciate the little things, as well as the big.

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Nyssa

Friendships Come from Unusual Places

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 13, 2016

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A small village in Greece is a magnet for migrants seeking work as day laborers from all parts of Eastern Europe and the Middle East. It is also the new home of UK expatriate Juliet who has just moved in and is setting up her translation business. Her newly purchased house and garden has been neglected for years, but is beyond Juliet's abilities, which leads her to hire Aaman, a migrant from Pakistan, from the group in the village square. What would seem to be a mismatch of backgrounds and personalities becomes a learning experience for them both over the coming weeks as the two become not just employer and employee, but friends.

We assume so many things about a person we've just met based on what they look like, where they come from, their age, their clothing, presumed status, and so on. But when you take the time and effort to look more closely, ask questions, and listen carefully, you find out that person is more than he seems. Assumptions become facts and form into a unique person with a unique story and background that often explain the causes for those presumptions. This story shows how looking not only *at* a person, at the surface, but *into* that person can be the start of not only a friendship, but a life-altering experience.

Aside from the lessons about friendship that the story teaches, it's an entertaining look at life in small-town Greece that most of us have never experienced. The reader is introduced to the people and shops of the village through Juliet's interactions as she gets used to the very different life she's chosen for herself in this relative backwater of Greece that at least is connected to the rest of the world through the wonders of the Internet and long distance telephone service.

I did have a couple of issues with the book in the areas of education and qualifications. I question how Juliet could have become competent enough in the Greek language only through coursework and tutoring to the point she could hang out her virtual shingle as a qualified translator in the language. Any language has idioms, dialects, regionalisms, and shades of meaning that only immersion in the culture as well as the living language can help a person understand fully. I had a similar problem (as a former programmer) with the apparent ease and speed that Aaman went from zero to webmaster in a matter of weeks with absolutely no previous knowledge of computers or programming.

But those issues aside, the book as a whole was an unexpected treasure. I was expecting a simple "fish out of water" story dealing with Juliet's new home and got a feel good story instead.

Recommended.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Susan Koppelman

An unusual and satisfying story.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 13, 2013

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The Illegal Gardener kept my attention from the beginning to the end. I often play a cynical game as I read, trying to predict the word that will appear at the top of the page when I turn to a new page. More often than not I predict correctly and am amused by my familiarity with clichés and annoyed to have been caught (by myself) reading something so predictable. As predictable as much writing is, the plots are even more predictable. But not so with this book. There is a level of rising tension that is beautifully portrayed as the two central characters come to know and appreciate each other more. The tension is never resolved. It is instead transformed.

Everything in my reading history and my understanding of plot devices tells me they are going to end up in a certain kind of relationship with each other - but that's not what happens. What does happen is deeply satisfying to me. But I had to let go of my cynical expectations to truly appreciate it. I would never have believed that Aaman could teach himself, using free online learning tools, to become what he becomes except that my son did the same thing so I know it can be done. I never would have believed that Juliet could actually make a living doing what she does except that I know someone who has been able to make a living in exactly that way.

The setting - Greece -- is to my eye and ear mostly evoked through what grows in the garden. The village life is touched on so delicately and so seldom that for me it doesn't evoke a particular setting. But the garden - ah, the garden! And the cats. . . .

Sometimes the book reminds me of May Sarton's novel set in Greece - THE POET AND THE DONKEY - and sometimes I was reminded of a couple of much more recent novels (whose titles I don't remember despite the fact that I loved the books). And sometimes the book reminded me of Demetria Martinez' novel MOTHER TONGUE, another story of a woman from a culture in which she is much more privileged, comfortable, and safe than the man from another culture with who she becomes involved. However, the books have drastically different denouements and the differences between them make each one shimmer more beautifully in my mind's eye. I like books that evoke for me echoes of other books I have cared deeply about. I recommend this book to other readers one hundred percent.

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Mrs Ferret

Odd writing style & implausible tale

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on May 17, 2015

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I've not been reading this series in order (not that it seems to matter as each book is a story in it's own right) & I've really enjoyed the others but sadly not this one.
The basis of the story is of an unlikely friendship which develops between two people of different ages, different sexes & different cultures living in rural Greece. She is looking for a gardener & he, an illegal immigrant, seems to be able to turn his hand to anything.
Unfortunately what starts out as quite a promising idea soon takes a headlong plunge into a silly & implausible tale.
For some reason about halfway through the author has moved from normal writing to staccato, presumably she thinks it told the tale better but I didn't like this clipped method at all & it certainly detracted in my opinion.
I will continue reading the series but would not be inclined to recommend this one.

21 people found this helpful

Lizzie

Friendship and Love

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on July 4, 2021

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The main characters in this book were largely likeable and good people. Life happened upon them and despite some really unpleasant events for Aaman his character stayed consistent and generally a force for good. Juliet’s kindness and developing love for him was sensitively dealt with. It was wonderful to read a story where there was no swearing, and the story was all that was needed to add atmosphere and interest. Threaded all the way through was the despair and hardship suffered by desperate migrants and the fortitude they need to survive.
I loved the sunshine and the way of life.
I looked forward to reading it each day and was sorry when it came to an end, albeit an end which was totally satisfying.

moon quartz

utterly charming literary read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on March 14, 2018

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This book was sitting on my Kindle for a while begging to be read and finally on impulse I succumbed. True the first chapter or two made me question my decision and what I was letting myself in for. Looking back, I wonder if it had to do with the rather delicate subject of illegitimate immigrant workers and a Pakistani at that. It's surprising how we let covert prejudices colour our perspective. I chuckle as I realise Alexi uses just that to subtly hammer this point among others in this her first novel. Set in beautiful Greece, at the core of the plot is a heartbreaking subject reflected in the novels title. The very beauty of the landscape emphasises the pathos and futility of the illegal immigrant. There is no doubting Alexi's acuity as she develops her characters and the plot. Her bravura shines through as she sets the stage for her story to unfold and imperceptibly sets up her readers too. One cannot get two protagonists as disparate culturally, financially and experientially as the quintessential English Juliet and Aaman the Pakistani youth. As far as the West is from the East one would not expect these two to meet. Yet in the illegal gardener, they do. Like a true virtuoso, she tenderly melds together these two personalities and much to ones delight their very differences become a profound learning experience. One is moved to tears as Alexi with alluring poignancy brings to the fore issues faced by illegal immigrants. Oppression, class differences, a life fraught with danger and corruption not merely from authorities but also from fellow immigrants, unwanted, hungry, feelings of worthlessness, loss of his dignity as a human being, the longing to have a piece of the western cake of affluence that seems to elude him to name a few. Despite this Aaman perseveres for much is at stake. One cannot help but be impressed by his grit, rooting for him. strangely during his darkest hour his concerns are for Juliet and that he may have let her down. Then there is Juliet who has buried her pain to be a mother, broken yet stoical she has taken flight. Alexi's research into the subject is impressive as she deals with all these issues. The book is driven by energy and feeling, there is romance albeit not sexual yet throughout Alexi is realistic. One desperately longs to discover what happens next and the pages of ones Kindle have never turned this quickly. Will the two protagonists overcome their physical and mental demons? This book continues to give to the very end not least Alexi's dazzling word sketches will certainly boost Greek tourism. Moreover it is a testimony to the brilliant plot and Alexi's penmanship that the end despite being unusual and equally thrilling feels a let down.

2 people found this helpful

Duchess 1st

... from those who thought it implausible to those who disliked the writing style

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on May 29, 2017

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I am amused at the mixed reviews on this book from those who thought it implausible to those who disliked the writing style. I have to say I really enjoyed it! The message it gave was much louder than style or plausibility! I wasn’t aware that this book is part of a series so I’ve no idea what the other books are like.

The story is centred around a British woman living in Greece and a Pakistani immigrant trying to raise money to take back to his impoverished family. He is a person who considers that the only way to succeed in life is to work hard and take nothing for granted whereas she appears to be thoughtless to others needs and rather self centred. As their relationship grows they become dependent on each other for different reasons, both have something to give and both take.

The outcome was that her life was enriched by his thoughtful actions and realisation that you got more back from giving and he benefited from her help with employment and education although he maintained his attitude all the way through that he worked for everything.

For me it was just so thought provoking. First of all how we can benefit from giving and secondly how long term friendships are made and last. It’s a book that will remain in my thoughts for a long time to come. Excellent!

8 people found this helpful

Heather B

Drew Me in from Start to Finish

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on May 28, 2018

Verified Purchase

I found The Illegal Gardener an intriguing and unusual book and I’m glad that I read it. I nearly stopped at the beginning when I discovered that it was written in the third-person present tense. However, Ms Alexi is one of the rare authors who can actually handle this tense properly, and within a very few pages I was so involved with the story that the tense used to write it was irrelevant.

All the story elements, as well as the characters, were interesting and different, and combined into a tale that drew me in right until the last page. (And that last page was brilliant, by the way.) I came away from the book having seen new places, and also having seen the world in general through some very different people’s eyes. I can highly recommend this book as a worthwhile read, and look forward to reading more in the series.

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