The Lost Garden: A Novel

Helen Humphreys packs some pretty important ideas into her slight novel set in the English countryside during WWII. THE LOST GARDEN is about a lot more than just gardens. It is about love of various kinds. There is love as grief -"Grief moves us like love. Grief is love, I suppose. Love as a backwards glance."There is the kind of love that permits us to simply share pieces of our lives, our memories. The kind of love where one will say, "Tell me something." And we do.There is the love of books and good writing. Protagonist Gwen Davis loves the work of Virginia Woolf, who has just drowned during the war. Weeping silently, Gwen listens to her friend Jane read aloud the closing pages of TO THE LIGHTHOUSE, and she realizes -"I will never be closer to her than now. The book is the shared experience, the shared intimacy ... The author is at one end of the experience of writing and the reader is at the other, and the book is the contract between you."This is a beautiful little book, its prose as delicate as the petals of the flowers that populate its pages, filled with love, longing and loss. Booklovers everywhere, take note. This one is for you.- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER

I have learned a lot about myself being in book clubs and reading reviews of books. It seems that I love a beautifully written story. I can't even read a book if the writing is not good. This book delivers so beautifully. I couldn't wait to get back to reading it, slowly so that I could savor the author's writing. I have learned to appreciate the time and effort it takes for an author to create a story that will be received well. I thought the premise was wonderful and because I love nature and gardening, that part was also a treasure. The reflections on the main character's childhood and her experiences with love were so profoundly mapped out. What I have learned is this book is not going to be for everyone, but those that appreciate deeper reflections will be astounded.

This is an excellent read. It is like reading a song. I loved it. So beautiful, a bit of a mystery a love story ,mostly just an excellent story.

I am so in love with her writing. This is the book I would write if I were able. The time and place are classic, a garden is where I reside, the remnants of which entertained me as a small child, while my mother pursued her hobby, nonstop drinking. My great, great aunt had planted perennials and roses, which survived even after years of neglect. I learned from them and planted gardens long after. A black walnut tree, which was old even then, offering a swing for my pleasure, still survives seventy years later.The prose is spare and ample, filled with emotion and love and loss and longing. The reader experiences every one of these and more. One of the most beautiful books I’ve ever read.

I loved this book. I’m an avid gardener, lover of poetry, advocate for reading aloud and awkward romantic.This story touched my heart. In rescuing a lost garden, our narrator finds her heart and her home.The writing could have been overblown but instead added to the power of the story. I could clearly picture the estate, the girls, the gardens and the situation where you are far from the war yet entirely devoted to supporting the war by feeding the soldiers and other civilians.I’ll be reading more from this author.

This is a story that takes place during about War II. It is about how the Blitz took London away from Londoners. A woman goes to a country estate to farm land to grow sorely needed foodstuffs. While there she recultivates the gardens. She discovers a secret garden that gives her solace. The story is also about young women and soldiers and love and loss. It is a bittersweet story.

A beautiful , haunting story told so poetically it brought tears to my eyes. Not the story so much as the writing.

I just couldn't get into this book. It moved soooooo slow. However I kept reading hoping for a positive ending which did not happen. I learned a little about plants and flowers but being someone who kills cactus I probably won't put any of that knowledge to use except to answer a Trivia Question. I did not know when and where Virginia Woolf died and was intrigued enough to look into that.

This is a well written book and I have loved reading it.The writer has a wonderful way of describing things and I couldn,t put the book down

good story

Nice book and quick delivery - thanks

In 1941 during the worst of the blitz, Gwen Davis from the Royal Horticultural Society is enlisted to move from London to the British countryside. Her assignment is to train a group called the Women's Land Army to plant and harvest potatoes to enhance England's restricted and rationed diet during the war. Her charges are sharing an estate with Canadian soldiers readying themselves to enter combat. The woman are billeted in some out buildings while the men are residents of the manor house. That is the perfect set up for a romantic novel, but this one is about more than that.Each character has a secret loss they are keeping to themselves. Gwen finds a "lost garden" covered by overgrowth and hidden behind a wall on the estate which she begins to nurture and slowly bring back to it's former glory. She discovers that the garden holds secrets which she is trying to decipher.Although this is a very short novel and a fast read, I think it captures the very essence of that particular time in history. And of the loss that war sparks in every sense. And how these British and Canadians keep a stiff upper lip while doing their duty. I enjoyed reading this story.

I found Lost Garden to be too fanciful. I was alive during the Second World War and the description of the Land Army was overly romanticized. Not a satisfying read.