This month’s Book Club Choice is The Pleasure Garden , a debut novel from local author Caroline Davison. Caroline has worked as a building conservation officer and is also a qualified garden designer and she has drawn on these aspects of her life to produce a novel which is set in a fictional stately home in Norfolk landscaped by the real life 18th century gardener Sir Humphrey Repton who was born in Bury St Edmunds.
Her publishers, Piatkus Books describe her book as ‘an intricately woven and sensuous debut that skilfully blends past and present in a rich story of art, history, love and betrayal.’ While her illustrious agents Greene & Heaton describe the book as ‘an intelligent romance…. a clever, intriguing and erotic love story, in which the past haunts the present’. Romance and the past haunting the present in East Anglia has been a theme running through the book clubs choices recently and written with a great deal of intelligence. The Pleasure Garden will I think satisfy a variety of readers. I’m sure there are plenty of gardeners out there who will be fascinated by the books references to Repton’s landscape gardening methods including his use of before and after designs in his Red Books. I also expect there are plenty of readers of romantic fiction out there who will welcome a frisson of eroticism. Gardeners who enjoy a touch of hanky panky are in for a treat!
Jeff Taylor
Replying to myself !
Intelligent, Romantic, Erotic? (see spin at www.greeneheaton.co.uk/)
I was looking forward to reading the Pleasure Garden for three reasons. Firstly I have some knowledge of the workings of the ‘heritage industry’ – archives, conservation etc and was interested in how that aspect of the novel was going to be portrayed. Secondly I know very little about eighteenth century landscaped gardens and was hoping to learn something. Thirdly I don’t often read erotic romance.
It was obvious from the very beginning that the author knew her heritage stuff. The description of the archives in Henford Hall and of Mrs Sayers were perfect – obviously the result of many such research trips. The information on Humphrey Renton etc was interesting enough for me to look him up on the internet and consider visiting Sheringham Hall. I assume that Caroline Davison’s agents Greene and Heaton were referring to this ‘academic’ aspect of the book when they described it as an intelligent novel because the rest really wasn’t very bright and definitely not romantic or erotic.
There was absolutely no romance as far as I could see. Nothing romantic in the relationship between Ben and Ruby just desperation on his part and deceit on hers. There was no eroticism even when Ruby was ‘taken’ by George just one of those sex scenes where you laugh out loud. Ok to do if you are involved but not if you are supposed to be watching! There was a lot of selfish lust both in the past and in the present but I found that just disturbing. Maybe the point of the novel? Human behaviour doesn’t change?
Ben should have got off with Jayne the archivist and then the book would have indeed have been romantic and erotic or is that just my imagination!
I don’t want to spoil the ending of the novel for those who haven’t read it but the contents of the secret room and what happens after its discovery was just plain silly.
Jeff
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