The Garden Book

Swan Hay, whose Chinese name is Shuang He, belongs to the third generation of a Chinese Australian family; her father teaches at a country school in the hills east of Melbourne, in the uneasy decades before the Second World War. She marries Darcy Damon, a man both ardent and cruel, and falls for the American flyer and architect Jasper Zenlin. While the two men wander the world, she remains at home and distils the turmoil the men leave behind into calligraphy, brushing verses onto leaves after dark in the garden. Half a century after Swan vanished, a librarian of rare books, Norman Shih, traces her through old guest-house shelves, second-hand bookshops and the scraps she wrote, without making clear what binds him to her. Loneliness, addiction and racism run through the story.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Genres

Historical, Love (assigned by AI)

Set in

Australia, 1930s

First published

2005

Author's age

55 when first published

ISBN

9781920882105 (Giramondo, Australia)

9781885030078 (Kaya Press, United States)

More

Wikidata