Winter Bloom

August 30, 2010
Struggling with widowed motherhood, Eva Madigan comes across an overgrown walled garden that immediately captures her imagination. Thinking it might help her heal, she asks the owner, Myrtle Prendergast, if she can bring it back to life. But since Eva knows nothing about gardening, this is easier said than done. Hoping to find help, she solicits her Dublin community and meets Uri, an old Jewish man with a painful past; his son Seth, recovering from a failed marriage; and Emily, a young woman concealing, for the moment, her own troubles. As expected, they find common ground and a sense of healing in the garden, at least until Mrs. Prendergast's son arrives intent on selling. Heavey's newest is a by-the-numbers tale of redemption with the requisite infidelities, heartaches, and abuses, laying a less-than-fertile ground for genre readers. The metaphor of nature as a path to healing is made too obvious and the Dublin backdrop doesn't provide anything unique. Genre fans won't find much that they haven't read many times before.

September 15, 2010
In the heart of Dublin, there exists a dilapidated, acre-wide, walled garden that hasnt been touched for years. When Eva, a recently widowed teacher and mother of four-year-old Liam, happens upon the garden, she instantly feels a strong desire to rebuild it into an urban green space. The garden has an unexpected effect on Evas life, bringing together a motley crew of unlikely Dubliners who rebuild it, all dealing with their own special kind of grief. We meet Emily, a college student who discovers she is pregnant after her first real jaunt with intimacy; Seth, an attractive man whose marriage is in shambles; Yuri, a Holocaust survivor; and Mrs. Prendergast, the aging owner of the garden, whose icy disposition cools to show a troubled past as the garden grows. The plot of the book moves a bit mechanically through these characters stories, and the small climax is somewhat overshadowed by a long, slack denouement. Still, the individual stories presented do create interest as well as a motif of regrowth and rebirth that makes for a satisfying read.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)