"The two central activities in my life - alongside writing - have been reading and gardening. And there has been a sense in which the two have meshed: I always pay attention when a writer conjures up a garden, when gardening becomes an element of fiction. I find myself wondering what is going on here. Is this garden deliberate or merely fortuitous? And it is nearly always deliberate, a garden contrived to serve a narrative purpose, to create atmosphere, to furnish a character."
Penelope Lively, Life in the Garden.
That last sentence is very true. I can't see what she means by a 'fortuitous' garden, though? Why would a writer put a garden in a book if it didn't matter?
Posted by: Callmemadam | 04 November 2017 at 08:57 AM
I suppose that if the writer were not particularly garden-minded, a garden might be there simply as backdrop, with no substantive part to play.
As an example of a garden having a role PL cites 'Rebecca' and talks at some length of the garden as it appears in the narrator's dream (possessed by ivy, nettles, etc.) and then of the significance of the rhododendrons, both in the garden and cut for the house, "uncomfortable, assertive, suggestive".
Posted by: Cornflower | 04 November 2017 at 10:04 AM