The Memory Garden
Contents:
But how long can Mel's idyll last before reality breaks in and everything is threatened? Praise for Rachel Hore's novels: Rachel Hore worked in London publishing for many years before moving with her family to Norwich, where she teaches publishing and creative writing at the University of East Anglia. She is married to the writer D.
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Share your thoughts with other customers. Write a customer review. Read reviews that mention memory garden mary rickert magical realism sarah addison alice hoffman little magic writing style addison allen look forward loved this book well written childhood friends fun to read loved this book old friends long time next book great read read and i enjoyed characters of the novel.
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There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later. The best sort of witches you can imagine. Deeply rooted in wonderful garden and food imagery. Incredibly important -- this is a book about women and friendships, and the history of how the rights of women affected friendships.
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It's about motherhood, and childhood, and about secrets and how much they can hold back and damage you. Like poetry, like a gorgeous perfect glass of wine, like chocolate. It is not surprising to me that a writer of Mary Rickert's experience wrote her first novel so skillfully and brilliantly, with none of those 'first book' problems, but the lack of surprise did not make it any less delightful.
Memory Garden
Buy this for your sister, your mother, your best girlfriend. Kindle Edition Verified Purchase. It is disappointing to sit down to write a review after a satisfying reading experience only to discover that the words that most readily leap to mind are those so stripped of meaning by overuse that they are rendered virtually powerless. Such is the nature of the hyperbolic overuse of adjectives. World Fantasy and Crawford award winning short story author M.
Her past takes the form of these friends, their secret tragedy and several ghosts; her future is Bay, whose caul-draped birth is proof against drowning, a promise of healing, and the power to see the ghosts of whose presence Nan is only dimly aware. Feb 02, Edel rated it it was amazing Shelves: May 08, Haddayr rated it it was amazing. Rachel Hore worked in London publishing for many years before moving with her family to Norwich, Norfolk and turning to writing fiction. The Memory Garden by Mary Rickert ,.
Dismissing a debut this lovely would be a shame. The Memory Garden is a book rooted in seasons, those in the world outside our doors and those that form the cyclical patterns of our lives. It is a love story, though not of standard romantic fare, that celebrates family and friendship and the importance of looking beyond the veil of our own assumptions and prejudices. It is a novel that will stir your hunger for good food, beautiful gardens, and lasting relationships.
I have to thank Mssrs. Jonathan Strahan and Gary K. Wolfe, along with author Mary Rickert, for their recent podcast discussion [on the Coode Street podcast] of this debut novel. As I walked my dog on a cool Spring night late last week and listened to them talk about The Memory Garden, I got the distinct impression that this was a novel that I needed to read immediately. Call it intuition if you will, but these rare occurrences of book-related clarity invariably result in the kind of meaningful book-to-reader relationship that we long for every time we open a book and begin that journey.
As Bay begins to tread the border between childhood and womanhood, she begins to suspect that there are things she does not know, little knowing that the secrets she is unaware of are much larger than she could imagine. Nan has been hoarding secrets for some time, hoping to provide Bay the protection made necessary because of the evils in this world.
'The Memory Garden' Grows With Grace And Tenderness
Mary Rickert has created a verdant landscape in The Memory Garden, inhabited by flowers and herbs that make the senses come alive, and characters so developed they will charm you, and exasperate you, and ultimately win you over. There is an opportunity for stories with a fantastical nature to become so ensconced in the fantasy realm that they lose the cadence of real life.
Mary Rickert begins each chapter with a plant or flower or herb and a brief description of its meanings and uses. Having spent my Memorial Day weekend with them, it is a sentiment I understand all too well. No author, editor or publisher knows the secret formula that will make a book connect with readers in a profound manner.
If they did, our every reading opportunity would be a reading experience. But it is so much more than good scheduling by the publishers as there are books aplenty that make for inspired reading during the early growing season.
The Memory Garden has ratings and reviews. Carl said: It is disappointing to sit down to write a review after a satisfying reading experience o. . Start by marking “The Memory Garden” as Want to Read: Lamorna Cove, in Cornwall's far west, has become home to Melanie Pentreath, who has retreated to the overgrown gardens of Merryn Hall following the death of her mother and the end of a relationship. Rachel Hore worked in.
The Memory Garden is a perfect blend of mystery and delight, eerie expectation and skillful revelation. There is something at once familiar and unsettling about the individual and collective journeys these characters are on. For a first novel it is highly impressive to see how Mary Rickert keeps you guessing about the many secrets hinted at throughout the story.
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At roughly pages, Mary Rickert does not waste a word, a skill no doubt developed from years of writing short stories that have garnered both nominations and awards. There is much I have not told you about The Memory Garden, which is a calculated choice designed to avoid misconceptions that might keep you from this experience. I had the sense that something similar may be at work here, and I was rewarded with a story that touched me in familiar fashion. Do not misunderstand, the stories could not be more different. They do, however, share a kinship in their ability to use literary and genre conventions to examine the importance of our relationships while maintaining an effective story structure.
It is a special accomplishment and I thank Mary Rickert, and those who influenced her, for going back and giving the novel format another try. This one is a winner.
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This is a novel that takes a lot of chances, not in obvious ways, but by choosing characters and situations that don't get much play in fiction nowadays. It's about women--not young and upwardly mobile urbanites, but rather women dealing with the pain and frustration of aging; and also the strange mirroring awkwardness of youth. It's about friendship--not a simplified Disneyfied version of friendship, but rather about the kind of friendship that can be taken for granted, or lost, and perhaps be regained.
It's about family, the kind you are born into but more about the kind you create and the possibility of doing so at any age. There's conflict but its at the level of the personal and it's grounded in each character having their own needs, desires, and subjective view of the world. But these aren't handled in a cliched manner.
Their involvement and intrusions are organic and not always obvious. I'm leery of saying too much because it's one of those novels that you move into and live with the characters. I will instead relay two significant facts. Second, it's a book that has colored my world and it springs to mind whenever I see an empty pair of shoes, apparently abandoned, but potentially serving, waiting, to be someone's planter for flowers.
As a fan of magical realism -- and a fan of both Alice Hoffman and Sarah Addison Allen -- I was intrigued by the promotional copy for this book. It sounded so promising. At the start, the writing in "The Memory Garden" is lovely and spellbinding. After a few chapters, however, I started to wonder where it was going, why I was reading it, or if I'd missed something. The setting and characters were atmospheric, but the plot went nowhere slowly, and was often a bit confusing. The author was so intent on creating her characters, it seems, that she neglected to keep moving the story forward.
By the time I was a little over halfway through the book, I struggled to keep reading and was tempted to start a different book. The author is gifted and worth watching, though, and I'll definitely give her next book a try.
Nan has tried to keep the past in the past. But one day she decides its time for her and her old childhood friends to get together. There were bits and pieces of this book I really enjoyed, but overall I found myself struggling to get through it. Parts of the story felt very disconnected from other parts, making me feel a bit disjointed when reading it.
Still, I did enjoy parts of the book. Some of the reunion scenes were touching and you could feel the hilarious spirit of the group.