Hassie is keen to integrate herself into village life and makes friends with the elderly and opinionated Phyllis Foot and also the recently widowed vicar Peter, also getting involved in the life of a young child called Penny who often hangs around the home. Descriptively written with warmth, laughter and understanding, a beautiful story. The characters and setting very evocative and lasting. Highly recommend. Much of the novel charts Hassie’s attempts to ingratiate herself with the locals, which include the outspoken and cantankerous retired schoolmarm, Miss Foot, and the friendly local vicar, a widower, who claims not to believe in God. Oh what a mix of emotions - I loved the cover. I loved the last few reads of SV. I loved the start of the book. By the middle I was enchanted, SV had written yet another triumph. But the end! Oh come on - I was completely lost, what was going on? I get it but I hated it. It really didn't work for me. SV had fallen from esteamed novalist to popularist fantasy nonsense. I am heartbroken.

The Gardener by Salley Vickers - Fantastic Fiction The Gardener by Salley Vickers - Fantastic Fiction

The problem with this book is not just its leisurely growth into its own story – taking its time to find a theme to bring to the table. The book is one of those alienatingly middle-brow, middle-class, middle-England ones. Margot is unlikeable with her cattiness and her above-everyoneness, and Hass is not much better, quibbling with every action and decision her sister makes, both past and present; being overly gossipy about her parents and what they were like before they lost them. She loves a reference to poetry, quotes "Twelfth Night" to us, has an expectation about certain magazines she's probably never read, and despite claims of poverty (due to her only work being illustrating a kids' fiction franchise which she of course hates) diligently overspends because it's for the locals. As she works the garden in Murat's peaceful company, Hassie ruminates on her past life: the sibling rivalry that tainted her childhood and the love affair that left her with painful, unanswered questions. But as she begins to explore the history of the house and the mysterious nearby wood, old hurts begin to fade as she experiences the healing power of nature and discovers other worlds.Through fate, Hass meets Robert, a charismatic artist. They have a passionate long relationship that is only able to be maintained on the sly, as Robert is married and has no intention of leaving his wife. When they are together Hass finally feels adored. The inevitable happens and they are caught out. Three years later and Hass is still grieving.

The Gardener by Salley Vickers | Goodreads The Gardener by Salley Vickers | Goodreads

Told in a gentle and soothing voice, it’s an absorbing tale that feels like a tonic or balm. It tells the story of the impossibly named Halcyon Days — or Hassie, as she’s better known — and her older sister, Margot, who use their inheritance to buy a rundown Jacobean house in a small rural village near the Welsh Marshes, a short drive from Shrewsbury. the novel also perpetuated some harmful ideas about women‘s bodies and their value, and it portrayed romantic love as hugely sexual (at least for Hassie) which i found very boring and unimaginative. it comes across at Robert and Hassie‘s relationship being mostly physical, but then why would Hassie be unable to get over him? because there‘s just no way Robert was THAT good in bed. As she works the garden in Murat's peaceful company, Hassie ruminates on her past life: the sibling rivalry that tainted her childhood and the love affair that left her with painful, unanswered questions. Our narrator, Hassie Days (it is revealed) is writing to her unborn child and the father has got to be Murat, the Albanian gardener with the beautiful white teeth and dazzling smile. Remember that night when Hassie went to look for the lost kitten and was full of sorrow? She saw a figure which ‘began to move slowly towards’ her. It was Murat who had been living in the woods. She refers to this in the denouement, confirmation to readers and, I thought, subtle and moving.And that leisurely growth is forever stunted – even a power out, or blown fuse, or whatever it is that afflicts the house before it's shipshape, is just mentioned and then ignored. But then, when the same applies to the greater things, those that might have actually provided a plot, you see all that is wrong about this mish-mash. The decorating, as dull as it was? Incomplete, forgotten, ignored. Likewise with the garden. Ditto with the history of the house Hass gets wrapped up in. No, there is some semblance of a story as regards Hass settling down, and some indication of a kind of fairy legacy regarding the building and its environs, but nothing that ever gels into the form of a decent story. Settling in the country Hass feels a connection to her father through the birds in the garden and the countryside. Through new friends in the village, she learns the history of the area, and more specifically their new home, Knight’s Fee. Hass explores the region’s significance with the early saints and pagan gods. Hassie is haunted by the relationship with her late father, and by the memories of her former lover, Robert. She becomes interested in the mysterious previous owner of Knight’s Fee, Nellie East, whose notebooks she finds and reads; a young and wayward girl, Penny Lane, dashes into her life; and then there is the gardener, Murat, employed to tend the grounds of Hassie’s and Margot’s new home. But as she begins to explore the history of the house and the mysterious nearby wood, old hurts begin to fade as she experiences the healing power of nature and discovers other worlds.

The Gardener by Salley Vickers | Goodreads

The characters I found particularly engaging and I loved the premise – the woman inheriting a tumbledown house in a rural area has all the hallmarks of a great fairytale. But my initial hopes for a modern fairytale with new lore, or deep lore or any kind of fresh thinking at all were disappointed.

This to me was a reminder that sometimes you just need to read books that explore relationships, rather than always solving murder mysteries. There are mysteries in THE GARDENER but they are not the primary focus.