A review by archytas
The Last Garden by Eva Hornung
5.0
Well, wasn't this an unexpected delight. I read way too many reviews of this before I read it, all of which gave me the wrong expectations (so you might want to stop now and just read the book). I can see why I got confused: the book is so subtle it would be easier to make it seem more definitive than it is. Stuff I liked:
Evocation of the Barossa I don't think about the Barossa much, although I spent much of the first decadeof my life there. But this book *smelt* like the Barossa. I could feel the heat, and the dusty wind, and see the grape vines, and taste the bottled fruit. It had that sense that strange set of interconnected communities which is both communal and isolated all at once. It had that weird nostalgia effect of making me ache and feel satisfied all at once, and I honestly don't know how Hornung did that because…
The world building is exquisite. There is a particular trick to inventing a perfectly real world that is all new, and yet feels like it just *should* exist, and Hornung pulls this off perfectly. This might smell, feel, look and taste like the Barossa, but it is an alterna-Barossa, a community existing in a distinct time and place which is not quite ours. The framing device of the Book of Seasons works beautifully, and also provides..
A tangled tension between change and continuityThis was one of the strongest themes of the book for me. The Book of Seasons lays out a sense of cyclical time, with the inherent timelessness and continuity that goes with it. But at its heart, the book is written to cope with jarring change, uprooted change, and that points to the lesson: that unchanging rhythm is a lie. Evidence of growth - economic, emotional, physical - abounds, which brings us to..
A celebration of humanityFrom the reviews I really had expected this to be much grimmer - I mean the premise is loaded with trauma. But its dominant themes were healing and growth, and the interlocked perspectives of the young pastor and the boy both reinforce this. Both have to recover, and also to grow (up?). Both have to shift worldview to understand and manage complexity, humanity and allowance for fraility and vulnerability. As they do so, they make deeper connections. It would be easy for this to be a simple condemnation of religion, but it's really much more nuanced than that: it is a condemnation of rigidity, abuse and control, maybe, but it is also a testament (heh) to what people - including people wothin these communities can do. There is an intreesting, and unexpected, celebration of women towards the end, which was unsettling in a very good way.
So, yeah, I think you could say I'm recommending this. It is the kind of book that you can savour well past when your eyes were on the text.
Evocation of the Barossa I don't think about the Barossa much, although I spent much of the first decadeof my life there. But this book *smelt* like the Barossa. I could feel the heat, and the dusty wind, and see the grape vines, and taste the bottled fruit. It had that sense that strange set of interconnected communities which is both communal and isolated all at once. It had that weird nostalgia effect of making me ache and feel satisfied all at once, and I honestly don't know how Hornung did that because…
The world building is exquisite. There is a particular trick to inventing a perfectly real world that is all new, and yet feels like it just *should* exist, and Hornung pulls this off perfectly. This might smell, feel, look and taste like the Barossa, but it is an alterna-Barossa, a community existing in a distinct time and place which is not quite ours. The framing device of the Book of Seasons works beautifully, and also provides..
A tangled tension between change and continuityThis was one of the strongest themes of the book for me. The Book of Seasons lays out a sense of cyclical time, with the inherent timelessness and continuity that goes with it. But at its heart, the book is written to cope with jarring change, uprooted change, and that points to the lesson: that unchanging rhythm is a lie. Evidence of growth - economic, emotional, physical - abounds, which brings us to..
A celebration of humanityFrom the reviews I really had expected this to be much grimmer - I mean the premise is loaded with trauma. But its dominant themes were healing and growth, and the interlocked perspectives of the young pastor and the boy both reinforce this. Both have to recover, and also to grow (up?). Both have to shift worldview to understand and manage complexity, humanity and allowance for fraility and vulnerability. As they do so, they make deeper connections. It would be easy for this to be a simple condemnation of religion, but it's really much more nuanced than that: it is a condemnation of rigidity, abuse and control, maybe, but it is also a testament (heh) to what people - including people wothin these communities can do. There is an intreesting, and unexpected, celebration of women towards the end, which was unsettling in a very good way.
So, yeah, I think you could say I'm recommending this. It is the kind of book that you can savour well past when your eyes were on the text.