Overview
It is high summer in Paradise. Laura Fenton takes toast, post, and the new Country Life out to the garden. Her spaniels stalk the white doves as the smell of newly mown grass mingles with the scent of old blush roses on the brick wall. She feeds the black swans and watches her husband tidying up the lawn. Thirty years of marriage with no electric shocks, a solid, stolid marriage based on the pragmatic ebbs and flows of middle age. Dependable Geoffrey: He loves his wife, sometimes painfully so, and Laura does love him in her own way. In return, he has given her everything she could possibly want: the mossy Elizabethan farmhouse that has been in his family for generations, the garden that is her greatest passion, the children whose children will inherit both. Laura's life seems idyllic - she has all that money can buy and a husband who indulges her every whim. But Laura is soon to realize just how much she has taken for granted when all that is important to her becomes threatened, and she and Geoffrey are forced to reassess each other and, ultimately, their marriage.Warm, witty, and perceptive, this debut novel by a renowned gardening writer tells a charming story in the grand tradition of Rosamunde Pilcher. Laura's life seems idyllic. She has all that money can buy and a husband who indulges her every whim. But Laura is soon to realize just how much she has taken for granted when all that is important to her becomes threatened.
Editorials
Publishers Weekly -
Saville's debut novel about moneyed English domesticity threatened and subsequently rejuvenated begins with shit. Except that "dog poohs" is the term protagonist Laura Fenton prefers for the objects her husband, Geoffrey, insists on picking up from the garden on the grounds of Lownden House, Geoffrey's ancestral estate, where they live. The beloved garden happily distracts Laura from all that's not perfect in her life: her two grown daughters loathe each other, and Geoffrey, who seems to love golf more than Laura, is irritated with her disinterest in sex. Financial problems force the pair to confront their emotional issues when Geoffrey's agricultural machine business fails and his son-in-law loses his remaining money through speculation. Laura learns all this after the fact and consequently feels betrayed enough to seek temporary solace in the bed of a former lover. Geoffrey's chief worry is losing the house and grounds, which mean more to him than the business. Veteran gardening writer Saville's prose is quite readable, and she incorporates lovely descriptions of gardens. She has the pieces in place for a solid domestic melodrama, but she makes Geoffrey such a weakling that the conclusion-in which all the horticultural themes of husbandry and transplantation find expression in plot-has more to do with the truths of the genre than with those of character. (Mar.)Kirkus Reviews
A British writer's debut aspires to Pilcheresque heights (glorious English gardens, estranged children, the sanctity of home) but falls way short, thanks to far too many loose ends and not nearly enough charm.Laura Fenton is a still beautiful 50-plus when her midlife crisis kicks in, coinciding with the annual opening of her magnificent gardens at the elegant Lownden House, where she and staid Geoffrey have spent their 30 years of marriage. At the opening, Laura receives her major shake-up in the form of Leo Ranson: her dashing lover from three decades previous, just before her parents had talked her into making a more suitable, socially acceptable match in Geoffrey. Laura dallies again with Leo, but when Geoffrey finds himself in financial straits (his business is on the rocks), her loyalties are sorely tested: Will it be comfort, tradition, family, or...a chance to recapture the fleeting passion of her youth? The threat of losing her home and all that entails, especially her luxurious life there, brings the situation to a head; finally, Laura's younger, poorer, divorced friend Tessa, who's also met—and been intrigued by—Leo, saves the day, in a manner of speaking. Meanwhile, Laura and Geoffrey's two daughters flit in and out of the story: Rosy and her dim-witted husband William, angry at the prospect of losing their inheritance, desert the Fentons in their time of need, but the younger, wilder Allegra—who changes her name when she converts to Buddhism—proves to be made of stronger stuff. At the close, Laura's martyr-like decision about her longstanding if nevertheless half-baked marriage will surprise some readers but satisfy few.
Saville has the trappings down but needs to work on creating characters worth caring about—and, here, a hollow ending doesn't help matters.