The Insistent Garden

Blood feuds and family secrets boil under the respectable surface of 1960s small town England in Chard's second novel. (Her first, Seal Intestine Raincoat. won an Alberta Book Publishing Award). At 18, Edith Stoker lives with her widowed father, who spends all his time obsessively wallpapering the living room and building a towering wall in the backyard to 'protect' them from their mysterious neighbor, who Edith has never met or even seen. Edith's wretched aunt Vivian treats her like a slave, and the story reads like a Gothic Cinderella tale. Unlike the simplistically cruel wicked stepmother stand-in that is Aunt Vivian, Edith's father is interesting and complex. He suffers not only from crippling grief following the death of his wife many year earlier but also, clearly, from some form of undiagnosed mental illness. Edith's fledgling desire for independence coincidences with an upswing in his paranoia, delusions and obsessive compulsions, which creates a simmering family tension. Glacial pacing, however, makes it hard to maintain faith in timid Edith. Chard's flair for mystery and moments of deft emotional insight throw splashes of color into a sometimes grey narrative. Epistolary sections from Edith's shopkeeper employer, while expository, also help to inject a measure of liveliness. While the lead up is long, readers who persevere are rewarded with a satisfying and well-crafted d%C3%A9nouement. (Sept.)