Over the past 6 or 8 months, I have
read many books but none of them have really grabbed me. I don’t have a lot of
time to read, so sometimes it might be a week before I can steal a few moments
to catch up with my latest, and I was finding that it was difficult to re-immerse
myself in the story each time. I wasn't sure, at the time, if it was due to the
fact that I didn't have much time to really get into it or if the stories weren't compelling enough to call me back to my Kindle. I found myself skimming
more than actually reading and then, of course, I’d miss things and the book
would be less interesting than it was before. I was beginning to wonder if I were
changing in some way, if I were failing to appreciate, to connect, to identify
and relate.
Then an acquaintance recommended Susanna Kearsley's TheRose Garden.
I’m a sucker for a good time-travel
story, so much so that I started a time-travel discussion group on one of my
online forums. I was surprised when one of my forum-mates recommended books by this
author I had never heard of. I checked the blurbs on Amazon and had to admit, they
sounded good. So I downloaded The Rose
Garden to my Kindle and began reading right away.
The first thing I realized was that
the problem I’d had with the last I-don’t-know-how-many-books was not me! The Rose Garden is extremely well-written and hits the ground
running. I was immediately appreciative of the style and immediately caught up
in the story. The characters are well-defined and the setting—an old stone
mansion in Cornwall—is a superb locale for time-travel. Descriptions of the
home and the surrounding countryside are vibrant and incorporate all the senses;
I actually felt like I could smell the sea air, feel the salt spray on my skin.
I began to wish I lived in a place that was so deeply steeped in hundreds—thousands—of
years of history.
So the very first day of reading I
was able to get through about 20% of it (you know Kindle—no page numbers, just
percentages). I was loathe to put it down, but the rest of my life was calling.
As I reluctantly turned my attention to my other tasks, I realized I was
looking out through the semi-transparent veil of great-book-residue. This is
very hard to describe, but anyone who has ever been in the grip of an excellent
book will know the feeling. It’s like looking through a window and seeing the
world beyond, yet also seeing in the glass the reflection of the room behind
you. You see one overlaid on the other and you can focus your attention on one
or the other as you wish. This was what I was doing, seeing the real world
around me, yet the feeling of the book overlaid it all, softening it, giving it
a dreamy quality. While attending to what I needed to, I was also wondering
what the characters were going to do next, what the turn of the story would be
when I got back to it. It was luscious agony imagining what might happen but
being unable to continue the story.
After my second long sit with the book,
I went outside for a much-needed exercise break. It felt very much like
dragging myself up out of a delicious dream when I would much rather have
scrunched down under the covers and given myself up to sleep again. My
immersion in ancient gray Cornwall jangled with my view of cactus and palm
trees reaching up into the fiercely blue Arizona sky, their palm fronds
rattling softly in the sun-warmed breeze. My “real” world felt unnatural to me,
as if the book were the truth and my view of Tucson were the make-believe. I
could not wait to get back into the story.
While reading, I found the book
impelled me in three different directions. First of all, of course, I wanted to
finish the book as quickly (or as slowly, see below) as possible. Secondly, I
wanted to record my impressions here while they were fresh, even as they were
forming. Thirdly, I wanted to get back to my own current work in progress, as The Rose Garden inspired me to paint my
own words with the same glowing brush. I needed three sets of hands, three
brains and three sets of eyes!
Reading a great book is like sitting
down to a succulent meal; it’s a struggle to balance the desire to gobble up
everything as quickly as possible against the need to savor every bite, to make
it last as long as humanly possible. Wanting to know what happens next goads me
on to read faster; the delicate descriptions of dappled shadows in the woods
and waves breaking on a rocky coast invite me to linger. This delicious tension
is the true mark of a good story; it holds us, it embraces us and carries us
effortlessly toward completion.
And the completion of the story
leaves us with a glowing satisfaction, tinged with sadness at the leaving.
But the good news is, I can go back
any time and visit again. Granted I’ll know the story, know the twists and
turns of it, but I’ll also know the characters, and seeing them again will be
like seeing treasured old friends. Here I've only just left and I’m already
looking forward to that next visit.
The
Rose Garden, by Susanna Kearsley, is about as perfect a book as I could
want.
