Bookish Thoughts: The Lost Garden by Helen Humphreys

What can I say about love? ~ Opening of The Lost Garden

The Lost Garden by Helen Humphreys

W.W. Norton & Company, 2003

Fiction (Historical); 208 pgs

The Lost Garden is a quiet novel about a woman who longs for love, who has never really experienced love, and when she does . . . Well, it is beautiful and sad all rolled into one. The novel is set during World War II and is about a group of women who volunteered for the Women's Land Army in an effort to help the war effort--and whatever other more personal reasons they have for needing a change. On a nearby estate are a group of Canadian soldiers waiting for their orders.

Gwen Davis is 35 years old and unmarried. Her mother was not the most affectionate of mothers and Gwen has never known what it is to be in love. A lover of literature and Virginia Woolf, Gwen only knows what is in her books. Wanting to get away from the city after her mother's death, Gwen decides to take charge of a project in the countryside to help the war effort--and to put her skills as a botanist to use. She longs to return to her first love of gardening, having grown tired of working in a lab setting. When she arrives at the requisitioned estate in which she is assigned in Devon, Gwen finds she's arrived a week later than anticipated. The young women she is to supervise have already taken up with their neighboring soldiers and have little interest in work.

Over the course of the novel, the reader sees Gwen come into her own with the help of Jane, one of the Land Girls, who is waiting for news about her boyfriend who is lost at war, and the Canadian Commanding Officer, Raley, whose love for music matches her love for literature. I could sense in Raley a deep sadness and suspected he had suffered a great loss in his past. He saw clearly what lay ahead with the war and proved to be a good influence on Gwen. The two work together to keep morale up and to help Gwen in gaining the women's trust and loyalty.

It bothered me a bit that Gwen does not use the women's real names, expect for Jane. I imagine it fit though given how Gwen stands separate from those around her. It takes time for her to warm up to others, and even longer to loosen up. While the Land Girls remain more in the background throughout the novel, their backstories barely told, one of them does stand out. That of Jane. She is such an interesting character, a lost soul as she waits for news about her boyfriend. She loves with all her heart. Whereas Gwen holds tightly onto hers.

As the women plow the fields and prepare for the planting of the potatoes, Gwen spends time in a hidden garden she's discovered on the estate. It is overgrown, but was once loved. The hidden garden tells its own story, one Gwen is determined to figure out as she works on making it what it once was. She sees her own life, her own experiences, in that secret garden.

Helen Humphreys has written such a beautiful novel. You can tell the author is a poet. Her prose is simple and yet descriptive, really bringing to life the English countryside and the characters within the book's pages. I found the juxtaposition between the war backdrop and the paradise of the gardens interesting. Even in such a peaceful place, the war was always there in one form or another, especially for the characters in Humphreys's novel.

Some would say this is a love story. The love between friends, romantic love, unrequited love, and the love between a mother and a daughter. Others might say it is a war story--on the impact war has even on those who remain home. It is all of those things as well as the story of one woman coming into her own, finding her heart and learning to live.

I had not expected to like The Lost Garden as much as I did. Even as I sit here writing this review, I find myself wishing there had been more to it, and yet feeling it was perfect. I wish the author had spent more time on the minor characters. I feel like I did not really get to know them. And yet, this isn't really their story.

To learn more about Helen Humphreys and her work, please visit the author's website.

Source: Many Thanks to Source: Many thanks to Catherine of Book Club Librarian for sharing this book with me through our postal bookclub! 

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