From Publishers Weekly
When Browning and her husband of 15 years divorced, she kept the house and garden they had shared in Westchester, but for a long time she was too depressed to care about where she lived. Gradually, she begins to see that working on the house she had neglected and transforming it into a home again is a way to recover from her despondency. In these short, elegant essays, Browning, a former editor-in-chief of House & Garden, muses on the aspects of domestic life that revived her and shows how she healed her heart and her home at the same time. That symbol of doomed love, the master bedroom, for example, she had abandoned. She fills the bathroom with comfortable furniture and flowers and learns to enjoy lounging in the tub while looking out the window at the moon. A garden bench, a fireplace, chairs grouped together for companionship, the long-neglected garden, impractical objects like a grand piano or ornate candlesticks, the kitchen, a place for companionship as well as "a nice place to be lonely" all these she comes to revere. Soon even the moss-covered bricks in her crumbling driveway delight her, as do ordinary rituals like weeding the garden, planting a tree and cleaning her closets so she can enjoy the memories they contain. Browning has written a warm and graceful paean to the commonplace, imbuing everything she contemplates with magic. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Browning expands on her popular column for House & Garden. Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
Sarah Ban Breathnach, author of Simple Abundance [Browning] shares her unique and appealing blend of warmth, wit, and domestic wisdom, and the result is moving and personal as well as useful and inspiring.
Book Description
"My story," writes Dominique Browning, the editor in chief of House & Garden, "is about the way a house can express loss, and then bereavement, and then, finally, the rebuilding of a life." Around the House and in the Garden is a moving narrative, culled from Browning's much-loved monthly editorial column, about the solace and sense of self that can be found through tending to one's home. From building a high stone wall in the garden to learning that every kitchen deserves a good kitchen couch, Browning reminds us that making a home is more than just a materialistic endeavor -- it is a way for us to comfort and reinvent ourselves, to "have the final word about what goes where...what feels comfortable, what is life enhancing...and gives us strength to go out and embrace the world."
Download Description
"For six years, House & Garden editor-in-chief Dominique Browning has written a monthly column that weaves together personal stories and tips about home decorating, gardening, and raising children with universal themes of domestic life. In Around the House and in the Garden, Browning adapts and expands these well-loved pieces, adding dozens of new essays, to create an insightful and moving narrative about the solace and sense of self that can be found through tending one's home. From bedrooms and bathrooms to gardens and trees, from the importance of a couch in the kitchen to the spiritual role of a grand piano, Around the House and in the Garden reveals the intimate relationship between home and self. Browning illustrates the ways her domestic needs, instincts, and arrangements have reflected major changes in her family life. Considering her own divorce, she focuses on how grief inhabits a room: ""When I was divorced my sense of home fell apart. And so, too, did my house."" Eventually, attention to her home helped to mend her heart, and the attention to her heart helped her to tend her home. Brimming with warmth, knowledge, and the useful decorating and gardening tips that have made House & Garden a favorite for one hundred years, Around the House and in the Garden is a book for anyone who has ever felt the need to reinvent a life or a space, who has ever fallen in love with the idea of home -- the place where we reinvent ourselves, ""the place where we have the final word about what goes where,...what feels comfortable, what is life-enhancing...a place that gives us strength to go out and embrace the world."" "
About the Author
Dominique Browning is the editor in chief of House & Garden. She lives in New York with her two teenage sons.
Around the House and in the Garden: A Memoir of Heartbreak, Healing, and Home Improvement FROM OUR EDITORS
Dominique Browning, the editor-in-chief of House & Garden, expands the autobiographical pieces she's written for that magazine into this memoir that combines personal history with helpful hints on gardening, decorating the home, and raising children. The book also includes numerous original essays that further explore how a meaningful life can be best lived through the joyful tending of one's home.
FROM THE PUBLISHER
For Six Years, House & Garden editor-in-chief Dominique Browning has written a monthly column that weaves together personal stories and tips about home decorating, gardening, and raising children with universal themes of domestic life. In Around the House and in the Garden, Browning adapts and expands these well-loved pieces, adding dozens of new essays, to create an insightful and moving narrative about the solace and sense of self that can be found through tending one's home.
From bedrooms and bathrooms to gardens and trees, from the importance of a couch in the kitchen to the spiritual role of a grand piano, Around the House and in the Garden reveals the intimate relationship between home and self. Browning illustrates the ways her domestic needs, instincts, and arrangements have reflected major changes in her family life. Considering her own divorce, she focuses on how grief inhabits a room: "When I was divorced my sense of home fell apart. And so, too, did my house." Eventually, attention to her home helped to mend her heart, and the attention to her heart helped her to tend her home.
Brimming with warmth, knowledge, and the useful decorating and gardening tips that have made House & Garden a favorite for one hundred years, Around the House and in the Garden is a book for anyone who has ever felt the need to reinvent a life or a space, who has ever fallen in love with the idea of home -- the place where we reinvent ourselves, "the place where we have the final word about what goes where, ... what feels comfortable, what is life-enhancing ... a place that gives us strength to go out and embrace the world."
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
When Browning and her husband of 15 years divorced, she kept the house and garden they had shared in Westchester, but for a long time she was too depressed to care about where she lived. Gradually, she begins to see that working on the house she had neglected and transforming it into a home again is a way to recover from her despondency. In these short, elegant essays, Browning, a former editor-in-chief of House & Garden, muses on the aspects of domestic life that revived her and shows how she healed her heart and her home at the same time. That symbol of doomed love, the master bedroom, for example, she had abandoned. She fills the bathroom with comfortable furniture and flowers and learns to enjoy lounging in the tub while looking out the window at the moon. A garden bench, a fireplace, chairs grouped together for companionship, the long-neglected garden, impractical objects like a grand piano or ornate candlesticks, the kitchen, a place for companionship as well as "a nice place to be lonely" all these she comes to revere. Soon even the moss-covered bricks in her crumbling driveway delight her, as do ordinary rituals like weeding the garden, planting a tree and cleaning her closets so she can enjoy the memories they contain. Browning has written a warm and graceful paean to the commonplace, imbuing everything she contemplates with magic. (Apr.) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.
Library Journal
Browning expands on her popular column for House & Garden. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
The editor-in-chief of House and Garden revises and expands on columns she wrote for H&G to chronicle her spiritual and material evolution post-divorce in terms of her changing relationship with her house. This is the story of the end of a home and the halting, unhappy, but forward-moving steps toward building a new one while living in the old one. Many of the short chapters still have the stand-alone feel of magazine columns, but they are held together by context. After a good stretch of being paralyzed by the emotions roused by her divorce, Browning sets about looking-from a new perspective-at her home and garden and how she lives in them. She writes about what each room means to her thoughtfully, clearly, and with an honesty that makes the reader's ears prick up. She wants the house to bring her and her two sons pleasure and happiness-not the kind that a well-heeled mom can buy, but the kind that must be discovered: of putting a big old sofa in the kitchen (when Browning notes that a good couch is hard to find, it has all the ache of a country-and-western song), of allowing sufficient time to unwind in the bathroom, of weeding and pruning, of getting on with the project at hand. Her humor, though black, is like a deep breath of air. When she calls an exterminator about a problem with flies, he says, "All you need to do is find the dead thing and get rid of it. Then the flies will disappear. They're maggots, by the way." Uncontrived and self-revealing, spiced by a screw-the-experts attitude, Browning's words feel genuine and hard-won, just like her story.
Art & Photography
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