The Last Garden

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It’s so exciting to see two new talents come together to create something so special. Movingly illustrated, this thoughtful and tender story of hope touches on timely issues of conflict and migration." To care for a garden, you have to know it deeply. You have to know it carnally. You have to touch it intimately, get under its skin. You have to go down on it, taste its undermurk, get as filthy as it wants, let it claw you, mark you, draw blood. You have to ache from it, stink of it, reel from it

The Last Garden by Rachel Ip (9781444946352/Paperback The Last Garden by Rachel Ip (9781444946352/Paperback

Rachel Ip has always loved language and literature. After studying modern languages and linguistics at Cambridge University, she worked in marketing communications for over 10 years, before turning her hand to children's book writing. The Forgettery will be Rachel's second picture book, following The Last Garden. She lives in Hong Kong. even though romance does play a role in this story, it didn't feel so overwhelming as it did in Kelly's book The Light Over London. The garden is front and center in all the plots. Kelly does an accurate job describing various trees, shrubs, and perennials, as well as gardening techniques, such as grafting and cross-pollination; In 1944 at the height of the war, Highbury House was requisitioned to be used as a military hospital. A place for wounded soldiers to recuperate. The beloved gardens designed by the now famous Venetia Smith are in danger of being torn up and used as crop land. The scientific literature is accurate, as far it goes. Multiple sclerosis results in progressive disability (there are scales for measuring this) or loss of function (you don’t need scales for this). But science is empirical, confined to the observable sphere. Science doesn’t know what anything feels like, the nature of anything.And you feel, after exertion, like a crash test dummy. You feel like a shit zombie, like a tortured golem. You can’t cry any more – this is still a thing, for some reason – and you’re getting resentful about that, because sometimes you desperately want to. They called this month Brumaire, the revolutionaries. From the word for mist. They were going for an agrarian feel, with the new calendar, for authenticity. But they also had a serious hardon for the Roman Republic, so they had to sound some classical notes too. Seriously, they were running out of baskets for the heads at this point, and this was the shit they were agonising over. Onwards and upwards, I guess they figured. Bestselling author Julia Kelly plants the seed of an idea, nurtures it into a vivid, intriguing seedling, then fertilizes, prunes, and shapes its various twisting branches into a stunning garden. Connected across the decades by a garden in desperate need of their care, three fascinating women grow alongside one another, shedding secrets and insecurities, eventually blooming with self-realization, hope, and love." —Genevieve Graham, bestselling author of The Forgotten Home Child

The Last Garden by Rachel Ip, Anneli Bray | Waterstones

But it’s no longer mine. I admitted defeat about five years ago and agreed to start hiring some help. I’ve been through a few gardeners since then – I won’t say there haven’t been some scenes, some artistic differences – but I like the woman who comes now. I see her pausing now and then, considering things. What to keep, what not to touch. I listened to the audiobook of The Last Garden in England by Julia Kelly on Overdrive. It was brilliantly narrated by Shiromi Arserio, Marisa Calin, Danielle Cohen, Katherine Littrell and Siobhan Waring. This book captured the lives, hopes and desires of five different but very strong women. These women were connected by the lure and love of one very special garden. They lived during three different and distinct time periods.The gardens came to life through these women and influenced, impacted and connected their lives in very different yet similar ways. The cover of The Last Garden in England was beautiful. Julia Kelly masterfully created a touching and heart warming book that boasted impressive research. The Last Garden in England is a poignant and heartwrenching tale of five women in three eras, whose lives are tied together by one very special place. I've always been an admirer of gardens, so this novel appealed to me right away. The stunning cover also attracted my attention. Unlike many historical novels that feature a 'dual timeline', this one has a 'triple timeline' which the author skillfully weaves together. One of my favorite things about this was the garden that tied each woman and their stories together.Venetia Smith is commissioned to design a garden at Highbury House. She finds the owners - her employers challenging. Brother of the owners breeds roses. Her designing a garden and him breeding some roses lead to a romantic relationship. I was wrong before, about the nature of this thing. It isn’t simple at all. Because it doesn’t exist, as a thing apart. Neither do I, come to that. Neither does anything, here in the last garden. There is only the light and its artefacts. All the imperfect glories. Three timelines and multiple characters challenged me for the first portions of the book. However, it became cohesive as the stories verged around the Highbury estate, family secrets, and the farm next door.

The Last Garden in England Summary and Reviews - BookBrowse

These three women were easy to like, and I loved how the gardens were the main focus for all three of them. It never really leaves you, though. You know how you can tell? Because spring and summer are unbearable still. I told you about this, the thing with the seasons. You’d think it would get easier with age, but no. If anything, it gets worse. I have been a huge fan of Ms. Kelly for quite a while now. I loved her previous two books: The Light Over London and The Whispers of War. When I saw that she had a new book coming out, I knew I had to read it. And it most certainly did not disappoint.But no, I was still feeling everything, even the faintest stroke of his fingertip. I was feeling things like a champion. I was at the top of my game, stimulus-wise. Still am, for what it’s worth. Small mercies.

The Last Garden by Rachel Ip | Goodreads The Last Garden by Rachel Ip | Goodreads

Late spring, especially, the shimmering rapture of April and May. Everything is perfect in late spring. The swallows come, then the swifts. You could watch them forever, in flight. All dart and ligature, stitching the spilled air to itself. The ecstasy of it.In Illness as Metaphor, Susan Sontag writes that 'the healthiest way of being ill…is the one most purified of, most resistant to, metaphoric thinking'. It's a view I share, and I remain implacably contemptuous both of the traditional valorisation of the ill (with its cant about bravery and battling) and of the more recent fad for redemption porn, in which catastrophic diagnoses (along with trips to India, say, or taking up beekeeping) are reduced to 'life experiences' and mined for fatuous koans of acceptance and serenity.