The White Garden: A Novel of Virginia Woolf

I can concur with previous reviews,both positive and negative. But I like this book for what Stephanie Barron says it is: "an alternative in which things were different" to the end-time of Virginia Woolf's lif. The white garden at Sissinghurst certainly comes to life, as does Bloomsbury history and the atmosphere of WWII in England in 1941. The book is a sort of tribute to Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West and their friendship, and the author makes good use of two rather ambiguous bits of history: the three weeks that elapsed between Virginia Woolf's disappearance and the discovery of her body and the story of the German spy "Dutchman Apparent Suicide" reported in The times on 1 April 1941.

I've long been a fan of Stephanie Barron's Jane Austen mysteries, but it was not until recently that I read The White Garden. Now I know that Ms Barron is just as accomplished in evoking a more modern world as she is that of some two hundred years earlier. The White Garden is one of the more famous sections of the beautiful gardens at Sissinghurst Castle, Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West's marvelous creation. Nicolson and his wife were notorious for their numerous affairs with both sexes over many years and for being part of the famous pre-war Bloomsbury Set, which also included Virginia Woolf, Vita's former lover and close friend. The White Garden focuses on the events around Woolf's suicide in 1941. Barron's chief character here is an American woman professional gardener, hired to duplicate the White Garden for a wealthy man's Long Island estate. She discovers a connection between the Woolf suicide and her own grandfather, who had been a gardener at Sissinghurst. The plot is rich and detailed, weaving between gardening, literature, espionage, and romance. The writing, as is always the case with Barron, is superb. I will seek out and read other "non-Austen" works by Barron without delay in the future.

Kudos to you Ms. Barron, you are simply marvelous. This book, set in the wonderful countryside of Kent for the most part, echoes those beautiful descriptions conjured up by Jane Austen; this however is written from the perspective of a professional gardner with a fully detailed list of flowers and shrubs used to create a White Garden -- the brainchild supposedly of Virginia Woolf. The idea for it came up during England's attack from Germany in the second World War where all light was blacked out to create a foil for the bombers using light and landmarks to bomb England. The white garden would be luminous at night helping to guide the family along the pathways. As the story unfolds about the last months of Virginia Woolf's life, the leading character gains insight into her Grandfather's life from documents found in the Gardener's shed. The conflict immediately begins as to ownership of those documents and whether or not Virginia Woolf had written them before she died. A lively mystery ensues with so many twists and turns, one hasn't time to do much wondering at what the end will be as you are completely swept up by the story line moving artfully towards the conclusion.

American Jo Bellamy comes to England to study the famous White Garden at Sissinhurst Castle. The landscape designer has been hired by wealthy Long Island patrons to recreate the work of Vita Sackville West, lover of Virginia Woolf. Jo conceals that her visit also contains a personal need. Her grandfather who worked at the White Garden committed suicide. The present gardener gives Jo a six decade old journal he found while rummaging in the tool shed; he believes Ms. Woolf was the author. Jo is stunned especially when the last entry occurs after Ms. Woolf died. She begins to follow the footsteps of Ms. Woolf seeking missing pages and answers to what happened in March 1941 when Virginia Woolf drowned in the Ouse with her pockets filled with stones. Purposely loaded with hyperbolic stereotypes to accentuate the writings of Virginia Woolf, THE WHITE GARDEN is a terrific literary mystery that hooks readers from the onset and never slows down as Jo tracks her heroine's death. The suspenseful story line is fast-paced throughout, but driven by the insight into the late writer's life and works; these are seen through Jo's follow her not afraid of Virginia Woolf thread. Stephanie Barron allows Jane Austen a breather as she successfully switches to another writing legend. Harriet Klausner

Reviewed By David M. Kinchen Ever since I read Elizabeth Kostova's 2005 novel "The Historian," I've been looking for a worthy successor in a genre that might be called on the road suspense historical fiction: A road trip in search of elusive truths about an historical figure. With the publication of Stephanie Barron's "The White Garden: A Novel of Virginia Woolf" (Bantam Books, 336 pages, $15.00) I believe I've found it. In Kostova's 656-page book, it's a search for Vlad the Impaler, the inspiration for Bram Stoker's Dracula. In Barron's paperback original, the subject is British novelist Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), a member of the Bloomsbury Group and perhaps most famous for her suicide by drowning in the River Ouse in Sussex. Or maybe for the punning title of a play by Edward Albee -- and later a wonderful movie version directed by Mike Nichols starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton -- "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf." In her last note to her husband Leonard Woolf, Virginia Stephen Woolf wrote: "I feel certain that I am going mad again. I feel we can't go through another of those terrible times. And I cant recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can't concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don't think two people could have been happier 'til this terrible disease came. I can't fight any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know. You see I can't even write this properly. I can't read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that -- everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can't go on spoiling your life any longer. I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been. V. " Barron's novel begins in the present day -- there are many flashbacks -- with Jo Bellamy, an American landscape designer visiting Sissinghurst Castle Garden in the English county of Kent. She's working for a wealthy client, Graydon Westlake, who wants her to replicate the famous White Garden of Vita Sackville-West at his estate in the Hamptons. It's a poignant trip for Jo because her beloved grandfather Jock worked as a young man for Vita and her husband Harold Nicholson around the time of Virginia's suicide. Before his own suicide, which occurred days before Jo left for England, Jock had long been haunted by something that happened at Sissinghurst. While she's studying the garden, which is famous for exclusively white or silver perennials, she discovers a notebook in a garden shed that contains an entry that might have been written by Virginia. But it was dated one day after Woolf supposedly walked into the River Ouse near her home in Rodmell on March 28, 1