Digging up truths
Life isn’t a bed of roses for three intriguing women
If ever there was a time that we needed stories to escape into, this past summer has been it. And I particularly liked escaping with this novel. Love, glamour, secrets, broken hearts and a beautiful garden – it’s the perfect recipe for a distracting and enjoyable read.
It opens in 1981, the year that Princess Diana married Prince Charles. However, the upcoming royal nuptials are the last thing that Libby Mortimer wants to think about. She has just caught her fiancé in bed with her best friend and her own wedding plans are in tatters.
Libby does the only sensible thing – runs away. She goes to stay at Larkspur House with her great-aunt Bess and Elfrida Ambrose, owner of the house, creator of its magical garden, and long-time employer of
Bess. It’s a cosy, comforting place where there is almost always the smell of baking and plenty of time for a drink in the garden. Grateful for their care and thinking that the two older women are struggling to keep on top of the place, Libby sets about doing what she can to help.
One of the projects she comes up with involves going through box-loads of old photographs and letters relating to the gardens that Elfrida has created over the decades. That makes her great-aunt nervous because both she and her employer have some longburied secrets.
The story flashes back to trace Bess and Elfrida’s lives from the 1920s onwards.
Elfrida is all about Champagne parties in the south of France and a passionate affair with a handsome Russian Count. Meanwhile, Bess is devoted to her mistress. As we sweep through 60 years of history, things get sadder, grittier and more complicated.
This is an emotionally
powerful tale with wonderful characters, particularly Elfrida, an irascible old lady in shabby gardening clothes in 1981, a spirited and headstrong beauty in the years before.
A Secret Garden Affair is such an evocative novel, I found myself longing to be at Larkspur House to have a gin with Elfrida and listen to her stories. The best kind of escapist reading.