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Jamaica Kincaid is a gardener after my own heart --- with a healthy respect for the
ordered and manipulated gardens of the British Empire, she lets her gardens grow wildly.
She is obsessed with the catalogues that entice her with their perfection and bounty (who
isn't!), even if the $200 worth of fruit trees she buys wither and die or produce a
completely substandard product. In MY GARDEN (BOOK), the writer gives us a glimpse into
her own soul by committing to paper the acts of kindness and random horror that she
encounters in her own gardens.
The best writing, I have decided, comes from writers who leave a smidgen of soul behind on
the pages of their every volume. Kincaid, whose fiction is far-flung, is a fine and
remarkably honest essayist --- these stories of her own adventures in the green trade are
funny, educational, even shocking (her ability to remark with spitfired distaste about
neighbors or horticulturists she dislikes is both uncanny and uncouth). MY GARDEN (BOOK)
is full of her love for her husband, her children, her Vermont town, the grass that grows
in unexpected places, the blooms she tends with utmost care.
In writing about winter, she blasts it for its lack of color in the garden. Although she
knows that there are ways to make a winter garden appealing, she will have none of it, and
we are the better for it. Kincaid's work here is pointed and eminently readable --- you
don't want to put it down. Reading this book was like looking forward to a weekly coffee
clache with my dearest and funniest friend --- you knew that each page turned would bring
another smile, another gasp, something out of the ordinary. MY GARDEN (BOOK) is full of
anecdotes that even the most novice gardener will appreciate --- and those who have no use
for the garden will marvel at her thirst for knowledge and the sheer audacity of her
words.
Jamaica Kincaid's book may have been designed to look like a child's journal --- each page
is decorated with borders of flowers, and there are gentle line drawings to illustrate
some of the more descriptive passages --- but it is full of an adult's acute and direct
observations about a struggle of natural proportions through the eyes of a born writer and
a hopeful gardener.
--- Reviewed by Jana Siciliano
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