Stephanie Barron's The White Garden
is a fictional attempt to understand what happened to Virginia Woolf during the three weeks after Leonard read her suicide note and she was actually found in the river. I normally get hung up on things like facts and how true to the story an author is staying, but I could not put this book down. When Jo Bellamy tells her grandfather, Jock, that she is going to Sissinghurst Castle to copy The White Garden for a client he says all the right things. After all, it's a dream job for any gardener. Before she leaves though she finds that Jock has hung himself. When she goes through some of the history of Sissinghurst she finds out that Jock worked at the very garden she is going to, for a woman name Vita Sackville-West.
She finds a manuscript and the only author she can think of is Virginia Woolf. She asks the head gardener if she can borrow it for 24 hours, but it ends up being much longer than that. She takes it to manuscript analyst Peter Llewellyn. Peter takes the journal, but after looking at the dates tells Jo that it cannot be a manuscript by Virginia Woolf because the journal starts the day after Woolf's suicide. After talking he admits that Woolf was actually not found for three weeks after her death. Peter takes the journal to his ex-wife, crazy and beautiful Margaux, who then runs off with the journal. Peter and Jo continue to try and unfold the story of Viriginia Woolf's suicide and Jock's role in it, all while dealing with chasing Margaux and their budding romance.
This is the second novel I have read by Stephanie Barron (the other was Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor) and I enjoyed it leaps and bounds over my first Barron novel. The plot kept me going but Jo Bellamy is a wonderful heroine. She struggles over her interest in the actual story of Virginia's life and her need to understand her grandfather's suicide. She is also willing to kick some balls along the way, especially her employer's. The novel is complete and total fiction, but I still respect Barron for the risks she takes with what might have happened during those three lost weeks. My only quibble with the novel is the portrait it paints of Leonard Woolf, although this is really more of a quibble I have in general with people who brand Leonard Woolf as a bad guy. He was greatly shadowed by Virginia's success and there are some theories about his hands in her suicide but anyway. That is a story for another day!
Pub. Date: September 2009
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Format: Paperback, 336 pp
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