Backyard

October 6, 2014
In Draper’s harvest of darkly hilarious mishaps, obsessive garden enthusiasts who rally for botanical superiority plant seeds of deception. The green thumbs of ineffectual gardener Marta Poppendauber, domineering plant expert Dr. Phyllis Sproot, and odd couple George and Nan Fremont twitch over “Burdick’s Best Yard Contest,” spurring a cutthroat competition in the sleepy Midwestern town of Livia. Phyllis blackmails childish Marta into infiltrating the Fremonts’ Eden, for which they have forsaken even their children. As competition squashes decency, marriages and innocent tulips alike are threatened. Are these gardeners suffering from the spells of Edith Merton, the dread Garden Witch, or are the Fremonts’ hallucinogenic Angel’s Trumpets to blame? Metaphors abound in a clever fable that never takes itself too seriously. Characters’ personalities are reflected by their botanical creations. The Fremonts’ elegant paradise resonates with overindulgence, Marta’s haphazard garden shares her disorganization, and Phyllis’s blooms wilt beneath rigidity. Readers looking for a quick, witty read will enjoy the thorns in this prickly arrangement.

October 15, 2014
A gardening competition leads to sounds of snipping in the backyard.Blistering and broiling in a steam room someone forgot to properly calibrate, Jasper Burdick, owner of suburban Livia's most prestigious garden center, dreams of a landscape bursting with enormous flowers of every ilk-all purchased at Burdick's Plant World, of course-but each bloom has a human face. Burdick's Best Yard Contest is born. Rumors of the competition and its prize money spread throughout Livia, a town riddled with more than its fair share of plant lovers. Draper carefully arranges his cast of loopy characters, turning the town of Livia into a living garden. Dr. Phyllis Sproot plays the villain. After completing a mail-order course from the Honey Larson-Bayles School of Agronomy, the previously merely pushy Sproot blooms into a domineering, manipulative know-it-all. Utterly cowed by Sproot's expertise, Marta Poppendauber worries that her own gardens will fall short. Once Sproot hears about the contest, though, she abandons her vicious pruning of Marta's gardens in favor of espionage. She sends Marta (in various ridiculous disguises) to snoop among the competitors' plants, quickly discovering that the Fremonts are her natural enemies. Oblivious to Sproot's villainous machinations, George and Nan Fremont have created a marvelous garden in their backyard, nearly bankrupting themselves in the process. Sproot is stunned to discover the Fremonts have defied all horticultural sanity by planting beautiful but hallucinogenic angel's trumpets. Debut novelist Draper lavishly describes the gardens of Livia, lingering on begonias and lilacs, clematis and monarda, not to mention Sproot's original blend of yuccas and a coreopsis-salvia-hollyhock blend. With so much detail, it's sometimes hard to see the gardens for the plants, but the silly shenanigans keep the pace speedy. A light tale of suburban warfare waged by the gardening elite.

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October 15, 2014
Unleashing a torrent of competitiveness not usually seen in the relatively tranquil and genteel world of suburban gardening, Burdick's Plant World's announcement of a best yard contest turns old friends into stealth subversives and new hobbyists into neurotic maniacs. Dr. Phyllis Sproot is convinced that her horticultural degree qualifies her for the title and will go to absurd lengths to guarantee her success. Her closest rivals are George and Nan Fremont, a happy-go-lucky, wine-drinking couple who just seem to have a knack for creating a veritable Garden of Eden in their cozy backyard. As word spreads of the Fremonts' blooming paradise, Sproot coerces nearly everyone she knows, or can blackmail, into desperate acts of espionage, sabotage, and even sorcery to undermine the Fremonts' efforts. Who knew gardening could be so cutthroat? Draper's savory satire of such an unlikely source of obsession and greed demonstrates a splendid affinity for Mother Nature and a sardonic appraisal of human nature.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)