From Publishers Weekly
Evocative, if occasionally clunky, Humphreys's third novel (following Afterimage) is the story of an Englishwoman's search for her place in a world permeated by war. The narrator, 35-year-old Gwen Davis, is a horticulturist who flees bombed-out WWII London to manage a team of "land girls"-women who grow vegetables as part of the war effort-at a country estate. She struggles to manage her wayward charges, who are more interested in the Canadian soldiers billeted in the main house than in cultivating potatoes, and writes letters in her head to her idol Virginia Woolf, whose recent death has left her feeling bereft. She also tries to seduce the world-weary, hard-drinking Captain Raley, who has a secret of his own that dooms their relationship. Though her conflicts pale next to those of the soldiers waiting to be posted to battle and even those of her new friend, Jane, whose cousin is a casualty of war and whose fiance is missing in action, it is Gwen's quiet self-discovery that is at the center of the novel. Humphreys renders convincingly her first, fleeting experience of deep friendship and love. Unfortunately, the story is sometimes marred by overwrought or cloying prose, though Humphreys's language also has its moments of elegance (during the blitz, "houses become holes. Solids become spaces. Anything can disappear overnight"). Humphreys doesn't quite have the narrative energy of Pat Barker and Jane Gardam, but fans of those authors may enjoy this exploration of the impact of WWII on English life.Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
*Starred Review* England in 1941 is the setting for this beautifully crafted and bittersweet coming-of-age story, where maturity means a stoic acceptance of the constant presence of death and the sadness of unfulfilled loves. Gwen Davis gladly leaves London amid the burning wreckage left by the German bombings on the same day that Virginia Woolf (to whom Gwen writes letters that she never sends) is pronounced missing, presumed drowned. Gwen has given up her job at the Royal Horticultural Society to volunteer as a captain in the Women's Land Army in Devon. She will supervise a small group of young women whose task is to raise food for the war effort. Awkward with people and inexperienced with men, Gwen initially finds the nonagricultural aspects of her new job beyond her. Gradually she becomes friends with one of the young women (she names the rest after various species of potatoes) and falls in love with the Canadian officer billeted with his men in the adjoining estate. Canadian Humphreys, author of two award-winning novels (most recently Afterimage, 2001), writes with a poetic sensibility, positing that even in the midst of despair, the land (and the heart) renews itself. Nancy Pearl
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Lisa Michaels
Humphreys has a poet's eye, and the story is full of startling images that linger in the mind.


Nancy Goodwin, author of A Year in our Gardens
This is a book to read again and again.


Rosellen Brown
Those who, as children, loved The Secret Garden will hear its echo in The Lost Garden....[D]elicate, moving .


Boston Globe, Karen Campbell, 17 February 2003
Luminous....a stunningly beautiful little gem that lingers in the memory like the heady scent of a damask rose.


The Democrat, Judy Gaither and Emily Gaither, 14 January 2003
Multi-layered in its themes with an undercurrent of wartime passion and danger...unforgettable.


Matthew Batt, San Francisco Chronicle
Humphreys's affecting third novel never fails to couple the realistic with the ideal, the historical with the timeless.


Margot Livesey, New York Times Book Review
A finely wrought novel....What brings Gwen to life and makes this novel work is Humphreys's meticulous, lucid prose.


Minneapolis Star-Tribune
A beautiful evocation of love and loss....Subtle and deeply affecting....Rich and satisfying.


Bookmarks, Jessica Teisch, 1 April 2003
A beautiful novel with substance.


Dallas Morning News, Lee Milazzo, 23 March 2003
A graceful, poetic novel of love and loss in England during World War II.


Book Description
Leaving London to grow food for the war effort, Gwen discovers a mysterious lost garden and the story of a love that becomes her own. This word-perfect, heartbreaking novel is set in early 1941 in Britain when the war seems endless and, perhaps, hopeless. London is on fire from the Blitz, and a young woman gardener named Gwen Davis flees from the burning city for the Devon countryside. She has volunteered for the Land Army, and is to be in charge of a group of young girls who will be trained to plant food crops on an old country estate where the gardens have fallen into ruin. Also on the estate, waiting to be posted, is a regiment of Canadian soldiers. For three months, the young women and men will form attachments, living in a temporary rural escape. No one will be more changed by the stay than Gwen. She will inspire the girls to restore the estate gardens, fall in love with a soldier, find her first deep friendship, and bring a lost garden, created for a great love, back to life. While doing so, she will finally come to know herself and a life worth living.


About the Author
Helen Humphreys is the author of Afterimage and Leaving Earth, both chosen as Notable Books of the New York Times. She lives in Kingston, Ontario.

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review from Discover Great New Writers
Fleeing war-torn London in 1941, gardener Gwen Davis leaves the "wild, lovely clutter" of the city for the safe haven of the English countryside. Unwilling to watch her beloved city crumble under the assault of incendiary German bombs, she accepts a position at a requisitioned estate in Devon, supervising the farming of potatoes for the war effort.

A 35-year old spinster with a wicked wit and a fondness for literature, Gwen arrives at her new post to find that the group of "Land Girls" she's to supervise have little interest in planting. They're far more eager to cultivate the human crop -- a regiment of Canadian soldiers stationed at the estate, awaiting their assignment. Allying herself with the Canadians' commanding officer, Gwen strategically wins the girls' cooperation by agreeing to a series of evening dances at which they may mix with the soldiers. Pleased to again be in control of her environment, Gwen makes two life-changing discoveries. The first is the existence of feelings she's never before allowed herself to experience. The second is a hidden, abandoned garden on the estate, the secrets of which Gwen is compelled to unlock.

With poignant, poetic mastery of her craft, Helen Humphreys has produced a smart, no-nonsense, and utterly sympathetic character in Gwen Davis. And as her affecting story unfolds and she plumbs the mysteries of gardening, readers too will explore the depths of the soil in which grow the tender shoots of love. Fall 2002 Selection

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"London is on fire from the Blitz, and gardener Gwen Davis has fled the devastated city for the Devon countryside. She volunteers for the Women's Land Army, an organization devoted to growing crops for the war effort. Shy and solitary, she is placed in charge of a disparate group of young women to revitalize the vegetable gardens at a beautiful but long-neglected estate where the grounds have fallen into ruin. Also on the estate, waiting to be posted to the front, is a regiment of Canadian soldiers." For three months, the young women and men form attachments, living in a temporary rural escape. No one will be more changed by the stay than Gwen. She falls in love with a soldier, finds her first deep friendship, and brings a hidden garden, created for a great love, back to life. While doing so, she finally comes to know herself and a life worth living.

FROM THE CRITICS

Rosellen Brown

Those who, as children, loved The Secret Garden will hear its echo in The Lost Garden....[D]elicate, moving .

Nancy Goodwin

This is a book to read again and again.

The New Yorker

"Afterimage," the author's previous novel, described the life of a maidservant employed in the hectic household of the photographer Julia Margaret Cameron. In this measured, lyrical book, the locus is once again a large house deep in the English countryside -- but now it's 1941, and Gwen Davis, a desperately lonely botanist employed by the Royal Horticultural Society to investigate canker in parsnips, has signed up to direct young women agricultural volunteers on an estate requisitioned for the war effort. Humphreys is a metaphysical novelist; for her, intricate emotional content finds specific analogues in the made world -- an astonishing photograph or, as here, an overgrown garden that, once cleared, reveals its consoling secrets.

Book Magazine - Beth Kephart

It is 1941, and London is beset by war. But out in the Devon countryside, on a ruined estate, a handful of young girls from the Woman's Land Army and a regiment of Canadian soldiers attempt to live and to love, to grow food and to train, while they wait for whatever will happen next. Told by Gwen Davis, an outwardly reserved thirty-five-year-old gardener, this novel reconstructs a held-breath moment in time and the emotional education of a woman who has never felt loved. Most exquisite when describing the discovered gardens of the estate, most haunting toward the end, the book feels at times more like a beautiful idea than a fully imagined story. Some characters are paper-thin, defined only by a tic or a hobby. Some of the dialogue is unnatural, stiff. And yet there is something lovely about the book as a whole. It remains with the reader long after the last page is turned, and it feels like an evening walk through a pungent, private garden.

Publishers Weekly