A Garden Story

In this memoir, Whiteson, who was new to me, relates his decision to create a garden in the yard of his Hollywood home. The book alternates between discussions of the garden and recollections from the author's life. In this sense, the novel serves much like Proust's madeleine, though many of the memories Whiteson recalls are deliberate, the results of calculated attempts to evoke memories through the combination of plants in the garden. We read of Africa, of the Watts Towers (see, e.g., The Watts Towers for more on the topic), the Garden of Eden, Death Valley, and a variety of other topics. Unlike the previous reviewer (there is only one as I write this), I did not find the final chapter to be a mere list of the plants in the garden and thus must respectfully disagree with her. Rather, the last chapter is an elaborate metaphor, bringing to its inevitable conclusion the garden's symbolic, nearly iconic, meaning. "A Garden Story" is not a how-to book on gardening but instead is an intensely personal story about one particular garden, allowing us to catch glimpses of the author's past and the character of one neighborhood in Hollywood, California. Well written for the most part, the book kept me reading until the end and left me feeling richer for the experience.