Let me start out this review
by saying that I went into reading this story with high hopes given the fact
that the story share its title with the book, and I thought that “Ground Fault”
was a great way to start the book. Unfortunately, I have to say that I found
the story “The Wonder Garden” to be rather disappointing. For the record, I
think that Lauren Acampora presented a lot of good ideas for a story in “The
Wonder Garden”, but I feel like the writing for this story is all over the
place and lacks focus, which really surprised me given how well Acampora
developed John as a character in “Ground Fault”, while still keeping the story
very tight, focused and contained.
Honestly, it’s very hard for
me to describe the plot of “The Wonder Garden” other than the fact that the
central character in this story was a woman named Rosalie given the fact that
the story seemed to go in all sorts of directions. It starts off by focusing on
the fact that Rosalie and her family were hosting a foreign exchange student, a
girl named Nayana, who was Bangladesh. After having the story be about the family
hosting Nayana for a while, the focus of the story seemed to shift to the fact
that Rosalie was the wife a doctor, so she spends a great deal time being
involved with her children’s school by serving on the school board. Personally,
I really enjoyed that part of the story, mainly because it had some interesting
moments featuring John from “Ground Fault”.
Based on Rosalie’s
interactions with John, it was pretty clear that she doesn’t like him very
much. Given the way he was portrayed in “Ground Fault” and how the couple that
was buying the house John was inspecting seemed to react to him, I can
definitely believe that he might rub some people the wrong way despite the fact
I think that he seemed like a pretty nice guy for the most part. I think that
getting to know how Rosalie feels about John was a great way for Acampora to
continue to develop him as a character even though he wasn’t the focus of this
story. Even though John was only featured in the story briefly, Acampora did a
great job of making it clear to the reader that neither Rosalie nor John is
very fond of each other.
At one point in the story,
Rosalie witnessed a strange interaction between her husband, Michael, and a
woman when their family was having dinner at a restaurant. When I was reading
this part of the story, I thought that the story would end up being about
Rosalie finding out that Michael was having an affair. However, Rosalie asked
Michael who the woman was, he denied knowing her, and this particular plot
thread was dropped after that. I’ll admit this part of the story really
intrigued me, and I really wish that this aspect of the story had been fleshed
out more. Give the fact that it only lasted for a few pages, it ended up
feeling like pointless filler, as far as I’m concerned.
The story basically ended
with Nayana telling Rosalie that her son, Noah, had taken her to see where the
name of his biological father was featured on a 9/11 memorial. Rosalie
confronted Noah about the fact that he had taken Nayana to the 9/11 memorial,
and he acted like a major brat to her and was suddenly acting like he has major
issues with the fact that he was adopted. Honestly, I feel like Noah’s behavior
came out of nowhere. Unless I missed something, which is possible since I spent
so much time wondering where the story was going, not because I was truly
invested in the story, but rather because the writing for “The Wonder Garden”
felt so scattered and unfocused; I’m pretty sure that it hadn’t been previously
established that Rosalie and Michael’s kids were adopted until Nayana told
Rosalie that she had gone to see the 9/11 memorial with Noah.
Given the fact that “The
Wonder Garden” suffers from a serious lack of focus and direction, it’s really
hard for me to say what the point of the story is. If I had to guess what the
point of the story is supposed be, I would say that it’s that despite all of
the adversity and conflict Rosalie faces throughout the story, she refuses to
give up and is still standing in the end. The following closing line of the
story only served to reinforce my belief that the point of the story is that
Rosalie doesn’t give up when she’s faced with adversity. “It is all right to
retreat. She will pull back, she will redraw her boundaries. She will find her
balance. When she emerges again, she will be refreshed, reenergized. She will
be the best Rosalie she can be. The best and only.” (Acampora 57)
Something that I considered
talking about in my review of “Ground Fault” but ultimately decided to wait to talk
about in this review is that one thing I’ve always wondered about is when it
comes to short story collections that are written by one author, how is the order
of the stories is decided? This something that I’ve always been especially
curious about when it comes to short story collections where all of the stories
are connected in some way like the short stories in this book are. Is the order
of the stories decided by the author, or is it a collaborative decision that’s
made between the author and the editor?
The other thing that I’ve
wondered about a lot is why did Lauren Acampora decide to have the title of the
book be The Wonder Garden? This is
something that’s especially baffled me after reading this story since the
titular Wonder Garden doesn’t have any impact on this story at all. Honestly, I
don’t even know why this story is called “The Wonder Garden”. The family
briefly talks about possibly going to a place called the Wonder Garden at one
point in the story, and then it’s never mentioned again after that. Unless the
Wonder Garden ends up playing a role in some of the other stories in this book,
it makes no sense to me at all for the book to be called The Wonder Garden. Honestly, I think a more fitting title for the
book would have been, Welcome to Old Cranbury, or simply Old Cranbury.
If it seems like I’m being
really hard on “The Wonder Garden”, please understand that I don’t mean to be.
I think Acampora presents a lot of interesting ideas in this story, but the
fact that the story seems to really suffer from a major lack of focus and
direction really hurts the story as a whole. I feel like Acampora really should
have just picked one of the plot threads that I mentioned earlier, and she
should have had the story be about that plot thread and only that plot thread.
Personally, I would have really liked to see Acampora expand upon the strange
interaction that Rosalie witnessed between her husband, Michael, and the woman
when their family was at the restaurant having dinner together. That part of
the story really intrigued me.
All things considered, while
I think “The Wonder Garden” has a lot of good ideas for a story, those ideas
were poorly executed, and the story is unfortunately still a mess. The writing
for this story was incredibly unfocused, and it really came across to me as
Acampora not knowing for certain what she wanted the story to be about. A major
highlight of this story for me was the fact that John was briefly featured in
the story, and we got some insight into how Rosalie feels about him. I feel
like that really helped to further develop John as a character even though
Rosalie was the protagonist in “The Wonder Garden”, and he was a very minor
character in the story.
That being said, my final
score for “The Wonder Garden” is 5 out of 10.
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