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I wanted to like LOST IN THE GARDEN because of the cover. A chinos and tee shirt-clad man stands on a wide expanse of green lawn, his back to us. Pink rabbit ears adorn his close-cropped head. On the back cover we see the rabbit ears, abandoned on the grass. It turns out to be an appropriate setup for a book about a man who, over the course of his 46th year, finally puts away some childish things.
I suspect that Michael Benedict, the fictional narrator, shares some characteristics with his creator, Philip Beard. For one thing, they are both lawyers, although Mr. Beard claims in his author biography to be "recovering." Michael has reached that itchy age of 45, and he just can't let go of the dream of becoming a great golfer. At the beginning of the novel, he makes a deal with his wife Kelly: if he can shoot 69 or better by the end of the season without giving up any part of his legal practice, she will go along with his idea of spending all his free time on his game with the goal of making the PGA Senior Tour when he turns 50. It becomes clear very soon that between then and now, when Michael is penning this novel in his childhood room at his parent's home, something has gone terribly wrong. The trouble (or maybe the blessing, if you like golf) is that Michael chooses to dole out the skinny on his crimes-against marriage between exacting descriptions of holes at his local golf club, Fox Run.
It's an interesting way to raise the stakes of a golf game. Along the way Michael relates his past as the unexceptional (he feels) son of a fantastically successful businessman, as an articulate horny teenager, as a bored lawyer who loves his wife and children but feels something is missing. What's missing seems to be his brain, at least temporarily, as he reacts with dismay to news from his wife of a surprise baby-on-the-way. This cuts off the flow of nookie from the exasperated Kelly, and the still-horny Michael makes some unwise decisions about how to remedy his state. Naturally, Michael's crusty old caddy Sal knows way more than any of the over-privileged players, not only about golf but about life. With Sal's help and some sincere soul searching, Michael stumbles on to some genuine insight about life and love, and worms his way back into the bosom of his family.
Mr. Beard's Michael is adept at handling the temporal breaks between the big Game and the narration of his fall from grace. He is also at times very funny: "At the time, sex education in public schools was still controversial, and my junior-high administrators tried to allay parental fears by assigning the task to the teacher least likely to succeed in imparting any real knowledge about sex." "I'm sort of like Gregor Samsa with keys to the BMW, and although he had more severe outward problems, my parents are no less repulsed." Michael is a sardonic, self-deprecating narrator and the reader can't help but like the feisty, smart, sometimes profane Kelly. His descriptions of their more memorable fights manage to be both hilarious and dead-on.
Still, being lost in this garden, you have to wade through a lot of golf for the good stuff. I'm well aware that for some, golf is the good stuff, and for those people this just might be the perfect book.
--- Reviewed by Eileen Zimmerman Nicol
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