Last Garden in England

 by Julia Kelly

This is the story of a British garden and its history in three time periods, early 1900s, 1940's and the present.

The story starts with a young woman being hired to design a massive garden on an estate in England.  This job ends up being her last garden in England.  After this she moves to the U.S. where she makes a name for herself.  As the story progresses we find out the garden designer has fallen in love with the brother of the family that owns the estate.  She gets pregnant but loses the baby.  To escape the shame of her affair and to be allowed to marry the couple leave England, changing their names to avoid scandal to the family.

The second story is about the same estate in world war II.  The house has been taken over to be a hospital for recovering soldiers.  The woman of the estate, recently widowed, is struggling from the death of her husband in the war and the "invasion" of her house.  The widow has a young son whom she is overprotective of.  Her sister-in-law has come to be Matron of the hospital and they often tangle over things.  As the story goes on the woman realizes how much she gave up to be a wife, including playing her harp, which she loved doing.

Some "land girls", girls sent to work on farms to help wartime food production also figure in the story.  There is one girl who hates the life there, another really thrives on it.  She becomes friends with the cook on the estate through delivering produce there from the farm and she becomes acquainted with the owner who gives her permission to draw the gardens as a hobby.  This young woman eventually falls in love with and marries one of the soldiers.

There is another young woman on the estate, a young cook.  One day her sister arrives, a recent widow also, with her young son in tow.  She wants to leave the boy with her sister as she fears London is not safe and she is working in a factory.  She does not provide any money for the boy's upkeep.  The lady of the house agrees he can stay and this boy and the owner's son become fast friends.  The young cook really resents having the boy their, she doesn't know how to be a mother.  Eventually the boy's mother is killed in a bombing in London.  The young cook is devastated.  She had hoped to get a career as a secretary and eventually be able to travel a bit but now her dreams are shattered as she has the responsibility for the boy.

The young master one day eats a poisonous plant and dies.  Why would a gardener plant poisonous plants in a garden??? His mother withdraws to her room.  But eventually she offers to adopt the other boy as her son.  She locks the garden where her son died, only after burying a box with pix of him, a favourite toy, and the adoption papers for the othter boy, then throws the key to the gate in a pond.

The third story has a young woman who has been hired to re-establish the garden on the estate as it was originally designed.  Part of it is overgrown, part of it has been destroyed in the past, she has a lot of research to do to figure things out but the owners do find some drawings and a neighbour finds some paintings his grandmother (the land girl artist) did of the garden.  Eventually the woman and her partner climb over the wall into the garden and start bringing it back to life.  They uncover the buried box.  The owners of the house are shocked to learn that the man they thought of as their grandfather was actually an adopted boy. The woman and her partner also piece together why the original garden designer likely left England.  The present day garden designer had been a bit of a gypsy with no  fixed address but she meets someone on this job and decides to settle down in that area.

It was an interesting read, certainly gave a good sense of what was going on in the war years in England.  An okay way to fill the time in pandemic days.

Klara and the Sun

 by Kazuo Ishiguro

This book is by the Nobel Prize for Literature winner of Never Let me Go.  I was really impressed with Never Let Me go but not his later book about a Giant.,

This book got good reviews but I have to say I found it disappointing.  It is about an Artificial Intelligence Robot but it was not anywhere near as interesting at the book Machines Like Me by McEwan.

This one is about an AF (Artificial Friend) Klara who is chosen to be the companion of a young girl Josie.  Josie has been "lifted" not sure what that involves but supposedly it is some type of genetic modification. However, due to being uplifted Josie is in poor health.

There is only one other neighbour near Josie's house.  The neighbour's are Rick and his mother.  Rick as not been uplifted but his mother hopes he will be able to get into an exclusive university because of his intelligence and with coaching from Klara.

Klara does have some other "uplifted" kids visit one day.  They are self-centred and cruel to Klara.   Josie falls in with their behaviour rather than defending Klara and Rick who is also there and feeling very uncomfortable.

Josie had a sister who died, possibly she also had been uplifted.  Josie's mother has been traumatized by the loss of her one child and doesn't want to lose Josie.  She is in contact with an "artist" who has proposed having Klara adopt the persona of Josie, should she die.  Totally Bizarre!!  Josie's parents are divorced and not on good terms.  Josie's father does not agree with this idea.

Klara gets her power from exposure to the sun.  One day she sees a large machine in front of the store she is in spewing smoke and blocking the sun.

Josie's health starts to decline severely and Klara gets the idea that if she can communicate with the sun, as it sets in a barn in a nearby field she will be able to convince the sun to heal Klara.  She promises to stop the smoke making machine and that that will placate the sun. I think an artificial intelligence robot which would be learning how to behave around people would have the ability to check out a crazy idea like this and realize it was untrue.

One day while Josie's family including her father are in town Klara tells  the Josie's father of her plan to stop the smoke machine.  It turns out she has to sacrifice some of the special fluid from her own body to affect damaging the machine. This seems to impair her ability somewhat.  She is devastated to find that there are still other smoke making machines around....

While Josie and her family are in the city Rick and his mother are meeting a man who was formerly his Mother's lover.  Rick's mother hopes the man can use his influence to get Rick into a good university. The man and Rick's mother have a big fight over how she has wronged the man in the past and how dare she ask that the man intervene.

Eventually Klara does get better, one day when the sun shines on her.  Rick goes to a different university.  I think this book was about the love between Josie and Rick, a true innocent love unlike the  warped behaviour of the adults... Rick's mom and Josie's mom.  At one point in the book Josie's father discussing Klara taking on Josie's "persona" if she dies and they talk about knowing someone's heart.  This I found disappointing too, our personalities are in our brains, not our heart.

In the end Josie and Rick go their separate ways and Klara finds herself in a junk yard where she cannot move but can look around.  The former store manager comes to her and asks her if she was a good AF, was treated well, and enjoyed her life.  She says yes to all this.

Sad, one of the only characters in the book who was willing to make a real sacrifice for the one she cared about ends up on the junk heap.... she could teach the adults a thing or two.  She remained optimistic, even if her solution was misguided, even when everyone else gave up on Clara's health improving.

An interesting story but not as good as it could have been.

The Devotion of Suspect X

 by Keigo Higashino

This book starts with a young Japanese woman murdering her ex-husband with the assistance of her daughter.  Her husband had been hounding her since the divorce.  As they are trying to figure out what to do with the body there is a knock on the door.  They hide the body under the table and answer the door.

Their next door neighbour, a mathematics teacher is at the door.  He has heard the noise and figured out what happened.  He offers to help them dispose of the body and coaches them about setting up an alibi when the police come.

A naked disfigured body is found near the river.  His finger prints have been removed also. Some partially burned clothes are found in a garbage can nearby.  The police are able to identify the man as the woman's husband based on the id in the partially burned clothes.

The rest of the story is a cat and mouse tale with a police detective and a university professor, amateur sleuth, trying to solve the crime.  They suspect the ex-wife did it but later figure out that the neighbour has a crush on the woman and may be the one who did it.

Eventually the neighbour confesses but in a plot twist we discover he killed another person, planting the husband's id and clothes in the bin nearby.  He also disposed of the husband's body somehow.  When the woman finds out that the neighbour has confessed she is distraught, then her daughter attempts suicide.  Finally the truth comes out.

At first I thought the book would be pretty straightforward but it kept you guessing til the end.

A great mystery!

Punching the Air

 by Ibi Zoboi and Yusef Salaam

This book is based on the life of a young black American man who was wrongfully imprisoned for the attack on a white man in New York.  The book is a collaboration between an author, Zoboi, and the young black man, now Dr. Yusef Salaam.

The book is written entirely in poems.  It is brilliant.  It is powerful, beautiful, angry, sad and ultimately feisty and hopeful.  It made my heart race because of the passion and anger in it.  Despite everything that happened to the young man he kept his spirit, his commitment to being himself.

It describes his trial, his trials in prison and what he experiences and how he fights for what he wants and needs despite many setbacks.

An amazing, unforgettable book.

I wish I could write like that.