📕 [Review] The Garden by Nick Newman
Long time no post! I've been busy the last few months, and coming back onto here and seeing my most recent posts are left in drafts, I'm realizing I've been gone longer than I thought, haha. I won't go too deep into details since this is my hobby blog and not as much a personal blog, but the big change is my fiance and I bought a house together and moved.
Things are sort of settling down now (only slightly) but I did sit down and read a book recently. I really enjoyed it so I wanted to write out my thoughts.
The book being The Garden by Nick Newman.
Quick Review
| Category | Notes/Rating |
|---|---|
| Characters | Deep! As you go along and learn more about the characters, your perspective of them changes. |
| Writing Style | Good. Third person, follows the perspective of Eveyln. |
| Editing | No complaints. |
| Story | Not my usual wheelhouse, but really enjoyed how it was put together. Very character-focused. |
| Overall | 🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷 5/5 |
I think I'll switch the rating to heart emojis, so I can have "blank" hearts and it'll read better.
The Garden is an apocalypse story, which is not my usual genre, so I can't attest to how well it holds up in that category. I wasn't even really aware that was the genre at first, since I misinterpreted the synopsis and reviews on the cover as a potential horror story. It does have some horror elements, but I assume those are intrinsic to the genre. The book starts a bit slow but picks up somewhere around the 25% mark.
I picked up this book while walking around B&N, and was interested in getting more books written by men. I feel like the modern novels by women I've looked at lately haven't really fit my tastes and wanted to see if it was a modern story issue or if a male perspective might just be a better fit for me. It also grabbed my attention because the main characters are elderly, which is not all that common.
Synopsis
The book follows Evelyn and her sister Lily, who are two elderly women living in their secluded family home. When the girls were young, the world began to end - and part of the mystery here is that, being young when it happened, they don't really know what or why it did. But the world is different and dangerous; the two of them stay on their property, maintaining the large garden started by their mother that provides them with everything they need to survive. The property is surrounded by a large, solid wall, and the girls were taught never to even look outside without sunglasses, as you could be blinded.
Evelyn, being the older sister, knows there are horrors outside the wall. She adheres to their mother's teachings and pain-stakingly created almanac, which guides their chores each and every year. Lily, on the other hand, is more naive than her older sister - Evelyn and their mother hid many of the horrors they witnessed from her. As a result, Lily has dreams and desires that Evelyn considers foolish; the most important thing is to continue to work the garden so that they both can survive.
But everything comes into question when a boy comes over the wall.
The nameless boy's intrusion into the garden causes the women to question the life they've been living, throwing the Facts of the World and the infallable wisdom of Mama into question.
Story
The structure of this story plays on a lot of mysteries. It's the type of story that doesn't give you the full picture, nor does it bluntly spell things out. Instead of the how's and why's of the end of the world, it's a story that focuses on the Now.
The women themselves are both likable. There are flashback chapters that tell what the girls' childhood was like, which helps piece together what's going on around them now. I wasn't so sure about them when it first started, but enjoyed the depth they added to the girls' backgrounds. Evelyn and Lily are very close, but very different people. Even growing up together they have very different opinions on life, the world, and the adults that were once in their lives.
The boy's age is kept vague. Evelyn guesses he's somewhere between 10 and 20, though he's also described as having "long arms" relative to the ladies, so he's probably already adult-sized. Maybe closer to 15? But it's also hard to guess as the state of the world has left him very naive and afraid. He himself isn't a strong character, but is a good catalyst for the other two.
The story is in third-person, but follows Evelyn's perspective - and it stays this way throughout, even with the flashbacks. That means that the only way to learn about Lily's background is through Evie's eyes. But I really enjoyed the subtle hints that Evie really isn't getting the full picture. There was a flashback where I felt I was getting a characterization of Papa through the vague understanding of a child. Ah, this is what Papa is like. He's this kind of person. And through more flashbacks filling out more and more events, I started to wonder... am I even right about what happened in that first flashback? Here I was thinking I was seeing past the naivety of a child who couldn't understand what had happened, but perhaps I was fooled from another angle.
Seeing more and more of Mama and Papa, the biases of a parent spoonfed into naive children who have no access to an outside world to form their own opinions, and growing paranoia disguised as protective love; it breaks the heart.
Final Thoughts
Evelyn, though she is clearly flawed, had me following her lead. Even as I suspected she might be wrong. And as the pieces of their life came together, it really painted a tragic picture - especially for one of the two sisters.
And for better or worse, I found Evelyn to be very relatable. She's got a bit of an ego, stubbornly thinks she's right, has trouble course-correcting even when she realizes she's in the wrong... and a few other problems that I also share, haha. Seeing Lily's true feelings and thoughts come out over time puts Evelyn's - and my own - behavior into perspective, and for me personally, adds onto the tragedies of the story.
I really liked this one. I don't think it'll push me into trying more apocalypse stories, necessarily, unless they catch my interest. But for me, it had the right mix of ingredients to tell a heart-touching story.
Now to go through my drafts and see if there's anything there I like enough to still finish and post. 🙂 If not, I'm sure I'll have something else to say soon.