Before I get into my review
of the third short story in The Wonder
Garden by Lauren Acampora, which is “Afterglow”, I want to address a
mistake that made in my review for the second story in the book (The Wonder Garden). Someone left a comment in the comment section of that
review, saying that I had misunderstood the story when it came to the part
about Noah saying that he was adopted. For some reason, I originally didn’t
realize that Noah had been lying when he told Nayana that he was adopted.
Admittedly, I was pretty bored for most of the story, so by the time that I got
to the end of the story, I was definitely having an extremely difficult time
paying attention to the story. I’m really sorry for getting that part of the
story all mixed up and confused when I talked about it in my review. I usually
try to be careful about making sure that I get the details of a book or TV show
right when I review them, so I feel really bad about making that mistake.
That being said, I went back
and read “The Wonder Garden” again before I read “Afterglow”. While I’m very
sorry for the mistake that I made in my review, I still stand by everything
else that I said, as well as the score that I gave the story (5 out of 10)
though. I still think that the story is all over the place and very unfocused.
When I read it the second time, I still couldn’t tell what exactly Lauren
Acampora was trying to do with that story. I feel like she wasn’t entirely sure
what she wanted the story to truly be about. Having read it twice, if I had to
guess what the point of the story is, it’s to show that Rosalie is determined
to overcome whatever adversity life throws at her and stand tall in the end,
but I could be wrong about that. I have to admit that when I was reading the
story again after reviewing it back in June, I found myself thinking that
Rosalie was rather annoying and sanctimonious throughout the whole story; with
that said, here are my thoughts on “Afterglow”.
Right off the bat, I have to
say that I absolutely loved “Afterglow”. The story was definitely a huge
improvement over “The Wonder Garden”, and I’d go as far as saying that I liked
it even more than I liked the first story in the book, “Ground Fault”, and I
really loved that story. I should probably mention that I recently bought the
audiobook version of The Wonder Garden on
iTunes, which wasn’t available back when I originally discovered this book, so
I bought copy of the actual book at that point. Now that I have the audiobook
version of The Wonder Garden, I
decided to just go ahead and start listening to it from the beginning rather
than skipping over “Ground Fault”. I’m really glad that I didn’t skip over
listening to it, because I loved “Ground Fault” even more than I did when I
read it the first time months ago, but I digress.
Compared to “The Wonder
Garden”, I think the writing for “Afterglow” is definitely a lot stronger and
more focused, and the protagonist of the story, Harold, is much more likable
and interesting than Rosalie was in my opinion. Personally, I found the fact
that he was so interested in the medical field that he was actually thinking
about going to medical school even though he’s not only a business man, he’s
also fifty-nine years old, so he’s obviously not as young most med school
students would typically be very interesting. That aspect of the story reminded
me a lot of when Edward Herrmann guest-starred in several episodes of Grey’s Anatomy as an older man who was a
med school student working at the hospital.
One thing that I really
liked about this story is the fact that Rosalie’s husband, Michael Warren, is essentially
featured in the story as a secondary character. Harold ended up befriending
Michael since he was really interested in the medical field, and Michael is a
neurosurgeon. I feel like there was pretty much no character development for
Michael in “The Wonder Garden”, so it was great to see Michael get fleshed out
some more as a character in this story, even if it was just a little bit.
I’ve been visiting the
website Good Reads a lot these past few months, so a few days ago I decided to
read some of the reviews for The Wonder
Garden that people have posted. While I’ve only read the first three
stories in the book, I definitely agree with what several reviews on Good Reads
said about the characters in each of the stories in The Wonder Garden not being the kind of characters that people
would be likely to be interested in reading a whole book about, which makes
them the perfect kind of characters to be featured in short stories. I like the
character John based on “Ground Fault” and the parts of “The Wonder Garden”
that he was featured in, but I’m not entirely sure that I would want to read an
entire novel about him. I’m pretty sure that I wouldn’t last very long if I was
reading a novel that was centered around Rosalie. Honestly, it was real
struggle for me to get through just the short story “The Wonder Garden”, and a
huge part of that was because of what Rosalie was like as a character. On the
other hand, I loved Harold, so I think that I would probably enjoy a whole book
focusing on him as the protagonist.
Despite the fact that a
large portion of “Afterglow” revolved around the medical problems that Carol
was having, the story ultimately was more about Harold than it was about Carol,
and yet Acampora did a great job of making me care about Carol and what she was
going through with her medical problems throughout the story. Admittedly, a big
part of why I got so invested in the character, Carol, and the story as a whole
was because I was really able to relate to what Carol was going through since I
was born with hydrocephalus, which is basically when you have excess
water/fluid on the brain. I had a shunt put in when I was born to help drain
the excess fluid, and I’ve periodically had to have shunt surgery to fix it
when the shunt has had problems functioning properly over the years. Ever since
I was a kid, I’ve also had problems with seizures over the years as well, which
is another reason why I was really able to relate to what Carol was going
through throughout the story. However, I’ve always had a different kind of
seizure than Carol appeared to have throughout the story. That being said, I
can honestly say that none of my own life experiences have ever led to me being
interested in touching the brain of a living person like Harold was and
ultimately got to do with Michael’s help while the doctors were operating on
Carol’s brain tumor.
The story ended before
Harold and Carol found out whether or not Carol’s brain tumor was cancerous or
benign, so I’m hoping that there will be some follow-up on that in one of the
later stories in the book. The doctors made it seem like there was a very good
chance that Carol’s tumor was benign, though. I really love this story, but it
really bugs me that we don’t know how things will all turn out for Carol.
That’s a big part of why
I’ve never been the hugest fan of short stories for the most part. So many
times I’ll finish reading a short story and just be left feeling extremely
unsatisfied by the lack of character and plot development in the story. However,
I’ve ultimately come to the conclusion that short stories should just be viewed
as a slice of life and only a piece of a bigger picture. Honestly, the first
collection of short stories that I ever truly loved was Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout. All of the short stories in
that book were connected with the titular Olive Kitteridge serving as the
common thread in each of the stories, which ultimately made it kind of feel
like a novel.
I’ve read a lot of other
reviews online where people have compared this book to Olive Kitteridge since these stories are all connected in various
ways, and personally, I definitely have to agree with that comparison. The fact
that each of the stories in The Wonder
Garden are supposed to all be connected to each other in various ways
instantly reminded me of Olive Kitteridge
the first time that I saw this book at Barnes & Noble. It’s also one of the
things that really drew me to this book, even though I’m usually not the
biggest fan of short stories. Based on the first three stories alone, I’m
really glad that I decided to buy this book. Much like Olive Kitteridge, the fact that all of the stories in this book are
connected to each other in various ways kind of makes The Wonder Garden feel like a novel and not a collection of short
stories, in my opinion.
All things considered,
“Afterglow” is definitely my favorite story in The Wonder Garden so far. Harold was a very likable and interesting
protagonist. I thought that the story itself was very engaging and well written.
I never got bored while I was listening to Jennifer Van Dyck read the story for
the audiobook version of The Wonder
Garden. Honestly, the only thing that I didn’t like about “Afterglow” is
the fact that we didn’t get to find out whether or not Carol’s brain tumor was
benign. However, as I said earlier, I’ve come to accept the fact that short
stories don’t always give the reader the whole story. Since the stories in The Wonder Garden are all supposed to be
connected in various ways, I’m going to be optimistic and hold out hope that
either Harold or Carol will appear in one of the other stories in this book,
and we’ll get some follow-up on Carol’s prognosis.
That being said, my final
score for “Afterglow” is 10 out of 10.
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