The Savage Garden
by Mark Mills
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Book Summary Information
Author: Mark MillsEdition: Hardcover
Published: 2007-05-10
ISBN: 0399153535
Number of pages: 336
Publisher: Putnam Adult
Book Reviews of The Savage Garden
Book Review: A great weekend read
Summary: 4 Stars
I read Mark Mills Amagansett earlier this year and found it incredibly enjoyable. His ability to set a scene is extraordinary and you can almost taste and smell what is being described. apparently for this work, he listened wholeheartedly to his editor and other reviewers here who criticised his lenghtly scene setting prose. This book is a good story, but it feels less developed than his previous work. It is a quick read, that does keep you turning the pages, but there are story lines that feel undeveloped and yet he feels the need to wrap up for the reader at the end. I also found that the secrets of the garden come a little too obviously if you remember any of your mythology. I do highly recommend this story for a good summer read that is much more full of content than your average beach read. You will learn something, and be transported to post war Italy (although some of the dialogue feels a little more modern). I look forward to his next work.
Summary of The Savage Garden
From the author of the acclaimed national bestseller Amagansett comes an even more remarkable novel set in the Tuscan hills: the story of two murders, four hundred years apart-and the ties that bind them together.Adam Banting, a somewhat aimless young scholar at Cambridge University, is called to his professor's office one afternoon and assigned a special summer project: to write a scholarly monograph about a famous garden built in the 1500s. Dedicated to the memory of Signor Docci's dead wife, the garden is a mysterious world of statues, grottoes, meandering rills, and classical inscriptions. But during his three-week sojourn at the villa, Adam comes to suspect that clues to a murder are buried in the strange iconography of the garden: the long-dead Signor Docci most likely killed his wife and filled her memorial garden with pointers as to both the method and the motive of his crime.
As the mystery of the garden unfolds, Adam finds himself drawn into a parallel intrigue. Through his evolving relationship with the lady of the house-the ailing, seventy-something Signora Docci-he finds clues to yet another possible murder, this one much more recent. The signora's eldest son was shot by Nazi officers on the third floor of the villa, and her husband, now dead, insisted that the area be sealed and preserved forever. Like the garden, the third-floor rooms are frozen in time. Delving into his subject, Adam begins to suspect that his summer project might be a setup. Is he really just the na?ve student, stumbling upon clues, or is Signora Docci using him to discover for herself the true meaning of the villa's murderous past?
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