canadian

It is the summer of 1941. WWII makes London a more dangerous place to live every day as bombs destroy sections of the city. The main character is Gwen, a lonely 35-year-old woman living in London and working in a laboratory. Her occupation as horticulturist provides her the opportunity to volunteer to lead a Land Woman's Group - several young girls who will plant gardens for the good of the war effort on a beautiful estate somewhere in the English countryside. A group of young Canadian men live nearby on the estate as they await orders to be sent into combat.

Gwen discovers a secret garden that was created in honor of longing, loss and faith. She becomes friends with Jane who is waiting for news of her soldier fiancé reported missing. And she has an attraction to Raley, the CO of the Canadian men.

The language is poetic and often quite lovely. The story is pretty good, but not great. There are a few flaws in the novel. The voices of Gwen, Jane and Raley are too similar. I thought the novel started off a bit pretentious, but as it continued, I found myself admiring the turn of a phrase or a clever metaphor. The author seems to bear her soul in this novel and I found it refreshing and courageous. This book was short, but so full of sadness. This book will linger in my memory.

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.

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