The Walled Garden

Maass' debut novel blends romance and poetry with the language of flowers. Stanford University graduate student Lucy Silver is spending a summer near Oxford, England, researching the life and work of mysterious British poet Elizabeth Blackspear, who authored several collections, including 1951's The Language of Flowers. Lucy's motives are more than just academic, however: Her English grandmother exchanged fond letters with Blackspear, and three years ago, Lucy inherited letters they exchanged. Soon after Lucy's arrival in rural England, she becomes embroiled in a series of power plays by the current custodians of the Blackspear estate and their greedy rival, while she doggedly continues her research and uncovers hidden messages in the poet's walled garden--a task that Lucy likens to the plot of an Agatha Christie mystery. Aided by fellow archivist Rajiv Resham and landscape worker Sam, Lucy does detective work to find the links between Blackspear's life, poetry, and garden, which could have a significant impact on the poet's legacy. In addition to Christie, Maass' novel evokes Dan Brown's 2003 bestseller The Da Vinci Code, with suspense arising from poring over poetic passages as well as the study of flowers and plants; Blackspear's textual references to the latter seem "almost like allusions to something else," Lucy notices early on, and this "seems significant, like a piece of the puzzle, even if she doesn't know exactly what the puzzle is." The prose is evocative and ornate at times: "Popping a few berries in her mouth is like tasting summer--deep and sweet, with an occasional tart one for contrast." However, the unfolding of the mystery at the novel's center occasionally feels predictable. Indeed, some readers may deduce the novel's big reveal before the characters do, and the ending, which resolves multiple problems facing Lucy and her comrades, feels too much like a deux ex machinato be believable. A pleasant if somewhat unsurprising literary diversion.

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April 15, 2022
Maass' debut begins with Lucy Silver, an American graduate student visiting England to work on her dissertation about Elizabeth Blackspear. Elizabeth was a famous poet and garden writer who was very close friends with Lucy's grandmother, Amanda, who raised Lucy. On her deathbed, Amanda made Lucy promise she would figure out what Elizabeth's secret was. Lucy ventures to England on a visa, but her work is met with resistance from the Blackspear Gardens' director, who, unbeknownst to everyone, is trying to sell off the land for nefarious reasons of his own. She finds an ally in Sam, a contractor who is working on the gardens, and as their relationship deepens, so does the mystery. This is a well-researched love story with multiple plot twists. Readers will enjoy the solving the mystery behind Elizabeth, Amanda, and their friend Sir Edmund, three layered, likable characters who were no strangers to loss. Fans of Susan Monk Kidd who like books with themes of love and secrets after death will enjoy this read.

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