(Book #40) Melissa hosted this get-together and served as she put it, a little summer meal. (That’s the full description of the meal in our journal!) We are left with my review:
Books appeal to us in such different ways — inspired language, glimpses of insight, or just a lovely story. There are certainly moments when Morton’s writing is inspired: “Odd that the stock should still be here when Nell was gone. Disloyal of it, somehow.” At other times the writing is overly descriptive as though each chapter required a weather report. (Weather descriptions have always been problematic for me, so don’t take that last comment too seriously.) Forgotten Garden appealed to me for its story, for the search, for the unraveling of old information. I’ve read some reviews in which readers were bothered by the author’s borrowing from Frances Hodgson Burnett, and I was concerned by that at first, as well. But I think it was quite clever for Morton to remind us that all ideas are sparked by other ideas/events, when on page 381, we meet Burnett at the moment when a garden serves as the inspiration for her Secret Garden. Reading Morton’s acknowledgements solidified that appreciation, as she thanks the authors who “fired her childhood imagination” and inspired her love of reading.
Big News: I have a grandson, Dennis Errol, named for my brother Dennis and a sweet friend of ours.