Garden Spells
Sarah Addison Allen
Reviewed by Judith Arnold
Okay. Let me say, right up front, that I’m not into whimsy. I’m not really big on woo-woo, either. If someone had told me Sarah Addison Allen’s GARDEN SPELLS was about two sisters with mystical powers, an aunt endowed with equally magical talents, a cute, wise child and an apple tree that produces not the fruit of knowledge but the fruit of knowing-your-fate, I would never have picked the book up.
But pick it up I did, and I didn’t put it back down until I’d reached the final page. I tried to resist, honestly. After the first few uh-oh-this-looks-like-whimsy-to-me pages, I shoved my New York-bred cynicism aside, removed the Sequoia-size chip from my shoulder and submerged myself in the world of Claire and Sydney Waverley. “The Waverleys were an odd bunch,” Allen writes, and indeed they are. Yet their oddness is merely a translucent veneer, and beneath it sisters Claire and Sydney are recognizable human beings, yearning for love and connection.
Claire is the older of the two, the more prickly and aloof. She refuses to allow anyone to get close to her because she’s been abandoned in the past and can’t bear to subject herself to that kind of loss and pain again. Sydney is one of the people who abandoned Claire, running away as their mother had years earlier. When she returns, she brings with her a young daughter, Bay, and the emotional scars left by an abusive relationship with Bay’s father. The vivid description of Sydney’s carefully plotted escape from her violent partner make quite clear the fact that GARDEN SPELLS has taken a sharp turn away from whimsy territory.
In the small Southern college town they call home, Claire and Sydney pursue their own plotlines. Claire must contend with the handsome young college professor who has moved in next door and who, despite all Claire’s efforts to shut him out, persists in romancing her. Sydney must face the shattered friendships, rivalries and jealousies she left behind when she fled town as a headstrong high school graduate. One of her old classmates still nurses a grudge. Another still carries a torch. Yet the only thing Sydney wants is a safe haven for her daughter – who, like all Waverleys, is also odd.
Then there’s Evanelle, the heroines’ elderly aunt and quite possibly my favorite character in the whole book. Evanelle can’t keep herself from giving people objects that they will ultimately need, even though she has no idea when they’ll need them or what they’ll need them for. She operates on compulsion and instinct, and she accepts her eccentricities with a shrug. Her efforts to mend the heart of Fred, the local grocer, whose longtime boyfriend has left him, endeared her to me forever.
Endearing: that’s what GARDEN SPELLS is. It tackles the painful subjects of abandonment and domestic violence and leaves the reader to understand that what allows Claire and Sydney to recover from their old wounds and attain happiness is not their magical gifts but their resilience and self-acceptance.
Even cynics need a dose of warm-and-fuzzy every now and then. GARDEN SPELLS cast its spell on me.
Order GARDEN SPELLS from
Amazon
About the Reviewer:
Writing under the pen name Judith Arnold, Barbara Keiler is the bestselling, award-winning author of more than 85 novels. Her most recent title, THE MARRIAGE BED, was published by Harlequin Books in May, 2007. She lives outside Boston with her husband and two utterly perfect (well, almost perfect) sons. Please visit her website at www.juditharnold.com.
Order THE MARRIAGE BED from
Amazon