Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen

BookTalk

The Waverly women are an intriguing bunch. Generations of these women are blessed with a touch of magic, and are given the care of an apple tree whose apples will reveal the biggest event in your life. Claire has taken over Waverly house, and its magical garden. She uses its flowers and herbs to run a successful catering business, where the dinner plans go beyond sustenance pairing food with a particular feeling the host wishes to impart. Roses in your cupcakes for love, Honeysuckle wine to see in the dark and reveal hidden truths. But while Claire’s gift has imparted success in her business it serves only to separate her from the community.

Sydney is running back home, back to the garden and magic she’s never embraced. Gifted with the ability to give the perfect hair cut and her daughter’s innate knowledge for where everything belongs. They are on their way to finding a home in Bascom. However, magic will not solve all problems and these women will have to repair their relationship and find strength in their hearts to receive the greatest gift of all…love.

Review

I liked this novel even more than my first read with Allen…The Peach Keeper. Garden Spells was Allen’s first novel and it contains more magical realism than her latest, The Peach Keeper. All of the magic is wonderful. Claire, Sydney, Bay, and even Aunt Evanelle are all gifted with a certain degree of magic. Claire can control the gifts of the family garden to elicit specific feelings in her diners. Sydney can give you a haircut that will change your life. Bay knows where everything belongs, from where the soup spoons go in your kitchen, to the person you’re meant to spend your life with. Although, of all the Waverly women Evanelle was my absolute favorite…she is taken over by an overwhelming need to give people gifts. The gifts are ones you’ll want to keep around as they will prove intimately necessary for you…from a ball of yarn needed a week later to finish a school project, to the condoms you were too embarrassed to use thus resulting in a pregnancy. When Evanelle gives a gift you use it!

The town of Bascom, North Carolina has relegated the Waverly women to the status of Odd-with-a-capital-O…and they wouldn’t be wrong. These women are definitely weird, but in a good way. The sisters in this story are haunted by the memories of their mother. Scarred in different ways by their upbringing, or lack thereof, Claire and Sydney have both run from the connection they need from their ancestral home…and each other. The magic of this story is delightful…like slipping into a cozy chair with a nice cup of coffee…But it simply adds a flourish on top of wonderful story of two women facing their fears and coming into their own.

Save this tale for a quiet morning. It’s a real girl’s book, full of beautiful things and hints of magic we all wish we had in our lives. Plus, at 200 pages, like Addison’s other works, it’s easy to devour in a short span. The problem is…you’ll want it to last for so much longer.

Rating: 8/10

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The Red Garden by Alice Hoffman

Review:

The layered tales in The Red Garden start as magical stories and culminate in a history of a town full of depth and feeling. It’s wonderful to see how stories from the beginning of the collection end up mentioned less and less realistically, less and less clearly, until they are part of the collective vocabulary of the town. To the modern resident they are ever-present and yet indefinable in their origins. As a reader you’ll begin to remember your own hometown folk stories. The rumors of a whirlpool in the lake, that road you didn’t drive on after midnight, even holding your breath as you biked past a certain house. Reading how Hoffman’s fictional town earned it’s legends you’ll wonder about the origins of your own.

Hoffman’s collection of stories present an extremely realistic view of a town. That being said, Hoffman’s tales do include her ever-present magical realism. A garden that turns all plants red. No matter what color a plant started as, they become blood-red for reasons exposed in the in the titular story. In another we meet a woman who may or may not have originated as a creature of the sea. Yet, while Hoffman’s blatant use of magic is enchanting, for the most part the magic in the stories is sutble…a woman and a bear who have a mother/child-like connection…a Johhny Appleseed who subsists on almost nothing…a woman who always brings you exactly what you need when you need it (like showing up on your doorstep with a basket of tomatoes when the craving hits). It’s truly the every-day magic that makes most of the stories special rather than common place. It’s that little bit of sparkle that makes a well told tale last through the generations.

Beyond the quiet enjoyment of watching a town history grow it’s the love that will keep you reading. Many of the tales follow stories of love lost and love taken. “Owl and Mouse” was one of my favorites, telling of a woman who walked her way into town and found the love of her life. The main character is a woman with her head in the clouds and her love is a blind man looking for the last adventure of his life. They have their day, and the memory of the dog forever. In “The Truth about my Mother” a child recounts the history of her mother as well as the tale of her entrance into the town and the beginnings of her second marriage. The daughter’s view is unique as she is at once a part of the story and yet, relegated to the edges of the town. Finally, my last favorite was “The Monster of Blackwell”. A love story in the theme of Beauty and the Beast with a more realistic ending. This one broke my heart in the best way possible.

This collection is a quiet work meant to be read with a cup of coffee and a comfy chair. Stories can be read singularly, but are best read continuously to build up the feeling of history…as well as remember each story correctly. At times they interlace and because many of the characters are named the same/from the same families, keeping everyone straight does present a problem. As does being aware of the passage of time. Hoffman skips around the years in a generally chronological manner, but heeds no structure to how long the gaps between stories are. Warning to the wise: take a note of the dates that start each story, it’ll help to orient you in time and with the family generations.

Rating: 6/10

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The Peach Keeper by Sarah Addison Allen

BookTalk

Willa Jackson left her hometown, Walls of Water, infamous. Revealing herself as the Jokester after 4 years of pranks. Willa left high school in handcuffs, unwittingly inspiring more than a few of her classmates to take more risks in their lives. Unfortunately, after failing out of college and the death of her father, Willa remembers her prankster years as nothing more than a warning to embrace the normal and mundane.

Paxton Osgood is picture perfect. The type of woman who does the work of 3 with not one hair out-of-place and matching shoes. The type of woman normal women hate. But Paxton’s life is not as perfect as it seems. At 30 she’s still living with her parents, the love of her life may or may not be gay, and quite frankly, it’s awful lonely being perfectly alone.

It all started with the renovation of The Madam, that beautiful historic mansion on the hill. It was released that day the peach tree came down. The dead body found buried will unearth secrets women spent their lives keeping. Now there’s magic in the wind and love at the door. Willa and Paxton soon find themselves untangling their shared history and luckily, neither will be the same.

Review

This book was not what I was expecting. It sounded good, I thought it was going to be a lite chick mystery. But this book was far more about friendship than suspense. And the mystery is not traditional. Allen uses magical realism to her advantage playing it both to increase the mystery and at the same time tone it down. All the magic swirling through the air is somewhat comforting, giving the plot threads a sense of inevitability. That the secrets need to come out so everyone can breathe a little eaiser…move on with their lives.

But it’s the friendship that’s the strength of this novel. Two women coming together and not just finding themselves, but each other. Willa and Paxton find themselves reconnecting to the larger web of women, helping and supporting one another. Realizing that when times get tough no one has your back like a girlfriend. Because you know the boyfriend is not going to help you with the dead body. Nope, crisis’ like that are strictly reserved for best friends, the girl you can call no questions asked. This book is heartwarming in that way, I found myself pausing to think of how lucky I am to have a group of women that I can hide my dead bodies with…It’s nice to see Willa and Paxton find the same type of friendship for the first time.

With the friendship, the romance, the magic, and the sweet scent of peaches you’ll find that this book is an easy feast for the senses to be finished in one sitting.

Rating: 7/10

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