The Various Stages of a Garden Well-Kept

Summary

Loosely based on true events, this multi-generational novel uses short, punchy chapters to provide a fragmented framework of one family, allowing the story to gradually come together as a whole.In 1920 Irini Gaspari, a young Greek woman, leaves behind all that she holds dear - her family, and particularly her friend Martha - and emigrates to America, bound for an arranged marriage to a man she has never met. After tragedy strikes and her closely-knit family gradually crumbles, little Marieta finds her own path into womanhood in the changing world of the 1950s and 1960s. Jumping forward to 2010, in Akron, Ohio two brothers, Herman and Richard, in spite of their very different personalities, share an awkward relationship with love. In their own de-romanticised ways, they are looking for 'the one.' They navigate romance, and take care of an ageing mother riddled with dementia and an obsession with her garden. The lives of these characters are interwoven through Frieda Kahlo: an enigmatic calico cat who drifts between reality and the spiritual world, connecting the generations of characters.