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bookedbymadeline's review against another edition
challenging
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
I was pulled in immediately! The novel is told through a series of letters going back and forth between Vita and Royce. I marked so many lyrical passages or thought provoking lines!
Slow, quiet reflections on privilege, obsession, control, and confronting/reflecting on the past. Also got to learn about Pompeii, Ancient Roman art, archaeology/anthropology, and filmmaking which was pretty cool!
Some of the most thought provoking passages were about privilege; how much are we responsible for the sins of those before us/that look like us?; and looking for similarities between ourselves and past generations; is it disrespectful to see them as being the same as us or natural to want to find similarities and connection throughout human history?
Oh my god the twists?! Jaw dropping đ± we donât get full answers on maybe one or two things but it makes sense in the context of the book. I devoured this book and didnât want to put it down! It was fascinating and thought provoking, easily a fave for the month đ€ The only problem is now Iâve read two 5 star reads in a row, can I continue the streak of good reading? đ€đ»
Content Warnings
Graphic: Colonisation
Moderate: Animal cruelty, Mental illness, and Slavery
Minor: Death of parent, Death, and Suicide
isabelrstev's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
emotional
mysterious
reflective
4.5
berndm's review against another edition
3.0
The book certainly kept me reading and entertained, but ultimately it left me empty. The story is told in two intertwined narratives, through letters exchanged between the two protagonists. The main issue is that the two stories never quite gel - there is simply no reason for both to be there even if they are connected on the surface. Unfortunately, one of the two stories, which details the unchanging infatuation of a rich, privileged youth with a student, is plain boring. The other one, which is concerned with a young woman processing her feelings of guilt for having grown up as a white child during the apartheid is interesting in itself but has no deep connection to the first story line. I donât regret spending time with the book, but I couldnât build any real connection to the characters or their actions.
sheeprustler's review against another edition
challenging
informative
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
always_need_more_books's review against another edition
3.0
Nearly 20 years after Vita broke off contact with Royce, he writes to her on his deathbed, determined to excavate the past. He is older than her, a former benefactor from her University days and from the letters between them we learn of their relationship, but this is a small part of the book.
We hear a great deal about Royce's younger days as a student himself and his infatuation with Kitty a fellow student who he helped financially so she could visit an archaeological dig in Pompeii. Vita was a South African film student, studying in America who received a grant that Royce set up in Kitty's name. The letters go back and forth, almost as if both writers are using the task as a sort of therapy - the letters don't connect with each other but each writer continues their story. Themes include racism, obsession, loyalty and guilt.
I found all the stuff about Pompeii very interesting and the letters between Royce and Vita were intriguing. I'm sure a lot of it went over my head and while I'm glad I read it, I can't really say if I enjoyed it.
Thank you to Cat Mitchell at Penguin Random House for sending a copy my way.
We hear a great deal about Royce's younger days as a student himself and his infatuation with Kitty a fellow student who he helped financially so she could visit an archaeological dig in Pompeii. Vita was a South African film student, studying in America who received a grant that Royce set up in Kitty's name. The letters go back and forth, almost as if both writers are using the task as a sort of therapy - the letters don't connect with each other but each writer continues their story. Themes include racism, obsession, loyalty and guilt.
I found all the stuff about Pompeii very interesting and the letters between Royce and Vita were intriguing. I'm sure a lot of it went over my head and while I'm glad I read it, I can't really say if I enjoyed it.
Thank you to Cat Mitchell at Penguin Random House for sending a copy my way.
rojaed's review against another edition
2.0
I found this book very disappointing. (It is also poorly read). I was not interested in the characters. I didnât like the way their letters donât relate to each other
roguepingu's review against another edition
4.0
*To contextualise my viewpoint, I am writing this review off the back of having just attended an event where Ceridwen Dovey was interviewed about this very book, and that has certainly sharpened my own understanding of its contents.
In the Garden of the Fugitives is an epistolary novel juxtaposing two characters: Vita, an undergraduate student interested in filmmaking, and an older man, Royce, who funds her pursuits via a scholarship. The novel starts with Royce reaching out to Vita, after a long estrangement, and sharing with her his life story as he talks from his deathbed. She falls into step and reveals her own confessions in her letters.
Iâve bumped this rating up from three stars to four stars but it is entirely arbitrary because I am still at a loss to how I feel about this book and whether or not I should be assessing it at all. To an extent, this reluctance to judge is what I have experienced approaching other works - such as Cambodiaâs Lament, a book of poetry written by Cambodian refugees reporting their own experiences. How can anyone cast a critical opinion on something so personal and say, âwell ho hum you definitely couldâve written about your life-changing trauma with more Oxford commas and less extended metaphors.â Obviously, the content itself is untouchable when it is written as candid truth. While not to the same extreme, I have similar reservations while examining In the Garden of the Fugitives
It is clear to whoever has even glanced at Doveyâs Wikipedia page that the character of Vita has moments in her journey of self-discovery that have not wandered at all far from Doveyâs own life story. That said, as Dovey has explained herself, Vita is not purely autobiographical. âWrite what you want to know,â advises Dovey, contesting the mainstream belief that writers should only write what they know. This third book of Doveyâs is certainly a third giant step in her development as a writer and the character of Vita is meta in the sense that it feels Dovey needed to write this character in order to move forward artistically. How can I bring myself to be judge on this process? It is perhaps best to let sleeping dogs lie.
My second hesitation derives from the ways in which I both liked and disliked this novel.
To its absolute credit, this book is a palimpsest of ideas and analysis. However - and here the emphasis is on me as a problematic reader, rather than anything reflecting on Dovey's work - there were so many personas of myself from which I approached this narrative:
1. Me as a survivor of high school and having to study Pompeii for my final year.
Much of Royceâs story is set in Pompeii where, as a young student, he has followed Kitty with tongue out and tail wagging to assist her with her archaeological ambitions. Although he has no archaeological background of his own, he does have puppy dog love and a wealthy estate. All this is well and good, and Dovey demonstrates her depth of research gracefully throughout the story, but I found that it was here that my feet began to drag. As with most things studied at high school, no matter how good the content is, by the end of the day every student loathes the subject matter which they are forced to study. That was my experience after having to write about Pompeii for all my year twelve ancient history exams. When Dovey was gently giving her readers appropriate geographical and historical context, I felt I was being dragged back to the classroom, and being told how to write about Fiorelli and Lazer in my HSC exams all over again. In fact, I was even approaching the novel as if I was marking an exam, thinking to myself, âAh yes, well done Ceridwen, you get a mark for mentioning the Napoli Mafia, but you should really also mention the corrosive effects of pigeon poo on the ruins.â Needless to say, this unwanted blast to the past (graduation was less than three years ago and so still a little too close for comfort) did not enhance my reading experience, and this was through no fault of the writing itself.
2. Me as a survivor of high school and having to study the epistolary form for English.
See previous point. Letâs just say, Iâm still scarred from Fay Weldonâs Letters to Alice which I stopped reading after thirteen pages and then proceeded to incrementally detest even further as we studied it at school. Iâve never been able to respect letter writing since. That said, I do think Dovey did a pretty darn good job considering that I am in never good humour for epistol-ing. The format of the letters served as an elegant seam between the two narrators so the stories were co-dependent while still revealing 3D characters, strong in their own right.
3. Me as a writer who is also coming to terms with her own voice.
Of course, Vita is not 100% autobiographical ("I hope not!" says Dovey in tonight's interview, describing Vita as very "creepy") but where the paths of Vita and Dovey do align is coming to terms with inserting themselves into their artistic creations. Dovey's first book was published at the age of 23. Blood Kin is crystalline - a work of political fiction that seems Orwellian, and is purposefully non-specific in its geographical and social setting. She includes nothing of her own persona and is careful that the gaze is never inward. This debut novel is in stark contrast to In the Garden of the Fugitives which is a metanarrative, unreservedly examining the creative process at an acutely personal and ethical level. Personally, as a writer, but specifically in regards to my poetical writing, I'm still at the very early stages of this development and this inversion towards the author hits close to home. Is this a good thing? In my opinion, yes. Admittedly, I am way too early in my creative pursuits to perhaps apply what I have gleaned from this novel to my own processes. Nevertheless, Vita's own struggle to discover what role she must play in her own creative productions is similar to my own difficulties in choosing to spend time writing poetry - which steeps me into a pool of guilt, as I have always considered my poetical writing as an excessively self-indulgent process- instead of focussing on my straightforward non-fiction political articles.
Honestly, it's this last reflection that caused me to bump up my review from three stars to four stars. During the first few pages of this book, I thought I was reading Donna Tartt's The Secret History but with a layer of self-aware white privilege. Such an assumption was too hasty and Dovey's book is a hell of a lot more than just a college coming-of-age story mixed with a romanticised obsession with the ancient world. During the interview I attended this evening, Dovey brought up the idea of "fiction as therapy" and I think this framework is what enriches the experience of reading this book. This is not the case of yet another author trying to weigh in on the Pompeii experience. This is not Fay Weldon being condescendingly didactic about telling you how to read or write. It is simply a novel reaching out to those who are unsettled. The aching flaws and openness of the characters are what makes them such exquisite examples of human ambivalence. In the Garden of the Fugitives is not an answer, it is a question. So reader, what do you want to know?
In the Garden of the Fugitives is an epistolary novel juxtaposing two characters: Vita, an undergraduate student interested in filmmaking, and an older man, Royce, who funds her pursuits via a scholarship. The novel starts with Royce reaching out to Vita, after a long estrangement, and sharing with her his life story as he talks from his deathbed. She falls into step and reveals her own confessions in her letters.
Iâve bumped this rating up from three stars to four stars but it is entirely arbitrary because I am still at a loss to how I feel about this book and whether or not I should be assessing it at all. To an extent, this reluctance to judge is what I have experienced approaching other works - such as Cambodiaâs Lament, a book of poetry written by Cambodian refugees reporting their own experiences. How can anyone cast a critical opinion on something so personal and say, âwell ho hum you definitely couldâve written about your life-changing trauma with more Oxford commas and less extended metaphors.â Obviously, the content itself is untouchable when it is written as candid truth. While not to the same extreme, I have similar reservations while examining In the Garden of the Fugitives
It is clear to whoever has even glanced at Doveyâs Wikipedia page that the character of Vita has moments in her journey of self-discovery that have not wandered at all far from Doveyâs own life story. That said, as Dovey has explained herself, Vita is not purely autobiographical. âWrite what you want to know,â advises Dovey, contesting the mainstream belief that writers should only write what they know. This third book of Doveyâs is certainly a third giant step in her development as a writer and the character of Vita is meta in the sense that it feels Dovey needed to write this character in order to move forward artistically. How can I bring myself to be judge on this process? It is perhaps best to let sleeping dogs lie.
My second hesitation derives from the ways in which I both liked and disliked this novel.
To its absolute credit, this book is a palimpsest of ideas and analysis. However - and here the emphasis is on me as a problematic reader, rather than anything reflecting on Dovey's work - there were so many personas of myself from which I approached this narrative:
1. Me as a survivor of high school and having to study Pompeii for my final year.
Much of Royceâs story is set in Pompeii where, as a young student, he has followed Kitty with tongue out and tail wagging to assist her with her archaeological ambitions. Although he has no archaeological background of his own, he does have puppy dog love and a wealthy estate. All this is well and good, and Dovey demonstrates her depth of research gracefully throughout the story, but I found that it was here that my feet began to drag. As with most things studied at high school, no matter how good the content is, by the end of the day every student loathes the subject matter which they are forced to study. That was my experience after having to write about Pompeii for all my year twelve ancient history exams. When Dovey was gently giving her readers appropriate geographical and historical context, I felt I was being dragged back to the classroom, and being told how to write about Fiorelli and Lazer in my HSC exams all over again. In fact, I was even approaching the novel as if I was marking an exam, thinking to myself, âAh yes, well done Ceridwen, you get a mark for mentioning the Napoli Mafia, but you should really also mention the corrosive effects of pigeon poo on the ruins.â Needless to say, this unwanted blast to the past (graduation was less than three years ago and so still a little too close for comfort) did not enhance my reading experience, and this was through no fault of the writing itself.
2. Me as a survivor of high school and having to study the epistolary form for English.
See previous point. Letâs just say, Iâm still scarred from Fay Weldonâs Letters to Alice which I stopped reading after thirteen pages and then proceeded to incrementally detest even further as we studied it at school. Iâve never been able to respect letter writing since. That said, I do think Dovey did a pretty darn good job considering that I am in never good humour for epistol-ing. The format of the letters served as an elegant seam between the two narrators so the stories were co-dependent while still revealing 3D characters, strong in their own right.
3. Me as a writer who is also coming to terms with her own voice.
Of course, Vita is not 100% autobiographical ("I hope not!" says Dovey in tonight's interview, describing Vita as very "creepy") but where the paths of Vita and Dovey do align is coming to terms with inserting themselves into their artistic creations. Dovey's first book was published at the age of 23. Blood Kin is crystalline - a work of political fiction that seems Orwellian, and is purposefully non-specific in its geographical and social setting. She includes nothing of her own persona and is careful that the gaze is never inward. This debut novel is in stark contrast to In the Garden of the Fugitives which is a metanarrative, unreservedly examining the creative process at an acutely personal and ethical level. Personally, as a writer, but specifically in regards to my poetical writing, I'm still at the very early stages of this development and this inversion towards the author hits close to home. Is this a good thing? In my opinion, yes. Admittedly, I am way too early in my creative pursuits to perhaps apply what I have gleaned from this novel to my own processes. Nevertheless, Vita's own struggle to discover what role she must play in her own creative productions is similar to my own difficulties in choosing to spend time writing poetry - which steeps me into a pool of guilt, as I have always considered my poetical writing as an excessively self-indulgent process- instead of focussing on my straightforward non-fiction political articles.
Honestly, it's this last reflection that caused me to bump up my review from three stars to four stars. During the first few pages of this book, I thought I was reading Donna Tartt's The Secret History but with a layer of self-aware white privilege. Such an assumption was too hasty and Dovey's book is a hell of a lot more than just a college coming-of-age story mixed with a romanticised obsession with the ancient world. During the interview I attended this evening, Dovey brought up the idea of "fiction as therapy" and I think this framework is what enriches the experience of reading this book. This is not the case of yet another author trying to weigh in on the Pompeii experience. This is not Fay Weldon being condescendingly didactic about telling you how to read or write. It is simply a novel reaching out to those who are unsettled. The aching flaws and openness of the characters are what makes them such exquisite examples of human ambivalence. In the Garden of the Fugitives is not an answer, it is a question. So reader, what do you want to know?
lightfoxing's review against another edition
4.0
In the Garden of the Fugitives, Ceridwen Dovey's newest offering, dives into history both personal and global with an effortless, elegant touch. The entire story is revealed through the correspondence of Royce and Vita, who haven't spoken in nearly twenty years. A story of love, control, and obsession, the two excavate their personal histories against the wider narrative of the archaeological work being done in Pompeii in the late 1940s, when Royce was a young man. The central figure here is Kitty, the woman Royce loved, the woman whose name he created a foundation in, a foundation which Vita was a beneficiary of. She is sparkling, beautiful, and the object of Royce's unrequited ardor. Vita, some decades later, is one of the young woman selected to have her passions financed by Royce's foundation, and she finds herself in an uncomfortable game of cat and mouse, disconcerted by his attentions but unwilling to risk the funding.
By the time we meet them, Vita is in her forties, and Royce is on death's door, being tended to by a palliative nurse, and seeking absolution for his trespasses against both Kitty and Vita. They begin to correspond again, and while Royce draws us back to Pompeii and Boston in the 1940s, Vita dwells on her fractured identity and the guilt of her twenties, torn between an Australian adolescence and South African childhood, shouldering her parents' guilt over leaving South Africa just as apartheid ended despite being on the "right side" of history. This trauma ultimately leads to a return to South Africa, which Vita dissects in detail for Royce. Both reveal the darkest parts of their own histories to each other, and to the reader, without touching on their own aborted relationship except in broad strokes, leaving it hanging like a distended corpse between them, working their respective narratives around it.
In the Garden of the Fugitives is at once tender, accusatory, exploratory, ultimately laden with the desperation of those seeking a type of personal absolution that they don't believe they deserve. Vita and Royce speak as much across each other as they do to each other, each laying (usually) gentle statements of blame at the other's feet, often ignoring the received missive in order to continue to tell their own stories. It is more in how they write to each other than in what they say that we come to understand the nature of their relationship, as well as who they are as individuals. It's often heartbreaking, frequently jarring, and in Vita's sections, discomforting, as the reader is forced as much as Vita to examine their own privileges and inherited shames.
By the time we meet them, Vita is in her forties, and Royce is on death's door, being tended to by a palliative nurse, and seeking absolution for his trespasses against both Kitty and Vita. They begin to correspond again, and while Royce draws us back to Pompeii and Boston in the 1940s, Vita dwells on her fractured identity and the guilt of her twenties, torn between an Australian adolescence and South African childhood, shouldering her parents' guilt over leaving South Africa just as apartheid ended despite being on the "right side" of history. This trauma ultimately leads to a return to South Africa, which Vita dissects in detail for Royce. Both reveal the darkest parts of their own histories to each other, and to the reader, without touching on their own aborted relationship except in broad strokes, leaving it hanging like a distended corpse between them, working their respective narratives around it.
In the Garden of the Fugitives is at once tender, accusatory, exploratory, ultimately laden with the desperation of those seeking a type of personal absolution that they don't believe they deserve. Vita and Royce speak as much across each other as they do to each other, each laying (usually) gentle statements of blame at the other's feet, often ignoring the received missive in order to continue to tell their own stories. It is more in how they write to each other than in what they say that we come to understand the nature of their relationship, as well as who they are as individuals. It's often heartbreaking, frequently jarring, and in Vita's sections, discomforting, as the reader is forced as much as Vita to examine their own privileges and inherited shames.
tasmanian_bibliophile's review against another edition
4.0
âOur memories are always imperfect, Kitty used to say. We have to leave ourselves cluesâphotos, scrapbooks, journalsâor our very own pasts become inaccessible, though we lived through every moment.â
Seventeen years ago, Vita wrote to Royce and told him never to contact her again. But now he is dying and decides to contact her anyway. Contact resumes, in the form of email exchanges between the two. The narrative takes us via these email exchanges, through their selected memories. Royce is elderly, wealthy and living in Boston, USA. Vita, born in South Africa, once a recipient of a generous fellowship from Royce, is middle-aged and living in Mudgee, Australia. The nature of their email exchanges permits a confessional narrative of sorts, but it also serves to enable both Vita and Royce to reconstruct their own versions of the past.
âI fit in here because I am caught between identities.â
Royce writes of his relationship with Katherine (Kitty) Lushington (for whom his foundation was later named). Kitty was a friend of his from college, and in the 1970s he followed her to Pompeii where her archaeological research took her to the Garden of the Fugitives, with 13 bodies were entombed in the volcanic ash. Vita writes of her earlier life, born in South Africa still then under apartheid, of moving between South Africa and Australia before attending college in the USA.
âYou start out blind. And then you begin to see.â
Identity, guilt and racism are some of the themes touched on as Royce and Vita recall the past. Royce is haunted by Kittyâs death, Vita by her past as a white South African. Vitaâs career has stalled, Royceâs life is ending. The future is uncertain, the past needs to be revisited.
âIf you choose to believe that everything is your fault, then the corollary is that only you are the world changer, the giver of everything good as well as bad, the only one with the ability to fix things.â
What can I say about this novel? For most of the novel, Ms Dovey had me spellbound. I felt Vitaâs guilt stifling her career. I felt Royceâs obsession taking hold of his life. Is it possible to break free of the past or, like the 13 bodies in the Garden of the Fugitives, are we trapped forever?
âEach gorgeous age is built around some core of rottenness.â
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
Seventeen years ago, Vita wrote to Royce and told him never to contact her again. But now he is dying and decides to contact her anyway. Contact resumes, in the form of email exchanges between the two. The narrative takes us via these email exchanges, through their selected memories. Royce is elderly, wealthy and living in Boston, USA. Vita, born in South Africa, once a recipient of a generous fellowship from Royce, is middle-aged and living in Mudgee, Australia. The nature of their email exchanges permits a confessional narrative of sorts, but it also serves to enable both Vita and Royce to reconstruct their own versions of the past.
âI fit in here because I am caught between identities.â
Royce writes of his relationship with Katherine (Kitty) Lushington (for whom his foundation was later named). Kitty was a friend of his from college, and in the 1970s he followed her to Pompeii where her archaeological research took her to the Garden of the Fugitives, with 13 bodies were entombed in the volcanic ash. Vita writes of her earlier life, born in South Africa still then under apartheid, of moving between South Africa and Australia before attending college in the USA.
âYou start out blind. And then you begin to see.â
Identity, guilt and racism are some of the themes touched on as Royce and Vita recall the past. Royce is haunted by Kittyâs death, Vita by her past as a white South African. Vitaâs career has stalled, Royceâs life is ending. The future is uncertain, the past needs to be revisited.
âIf you choose to believe that everything is your fault, then the corollary is that only you are the world changer, the giver of everything good as well as bad, the only one with the ability to fix things.â
What can I say about this novel? For most of the novel, Ms Dovey had me spellbound. I felt Vitaâs guilt stifling her career. I felt Royceâs obsession taking hold of his life. Is it possible to break free of the past or, like the 13 bodies in the Garden of the Fugitives, are we trapped forever?
âEach gorgeous age is built around some core of rottenness.â
Jennifer Cameron-Smith