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Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
May 2007, 336 pages
Paperback:
May 2008, 352 pages
Book Reviewed by:
BookBrowse Review Team
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Like many of its ilk The Savage
Garden combines two mysteries in one, one
ancient and one modern. It's late Spring 1958; Adam
Banting, an intelligent but callow history of art
student, has yet to choose a thesis subject for his
final exam the following year, so is delighted to
take up his professor's suggestion that he spend
part of his summer researching a Renaissance villa
in Tuscany, which can then form the basis of his
thesis. Shortly after, Adam sets off for a summer
that (we know from the prologue) will change him
forever.
Mills embroiders themes of passion, survival and
divided family loyalties into a plot as deft and as
civilized as the setting. The Savage Garden
is easily on a par with other recent high brow
literary thrillers such as
The Historian and
The Book of Air and Shadows, and a cut above
the likes of
The Rule of Four. Long periods of
slow intellectual discovery and background setting
are countered by some decent action late in the game
and the occasional, not too explicit, sexual
encounter.
The only significant misstep, from this reviewer's
point of view, is the little joke that Mills plays
with the reader by opening the first pages of The
Savage Garden with an entirely different story
to the one that follows. The reader soon discovers
that he or she has been reading the opening lines
from the novel that Adam's soon to be ex-girlfriend
is writing. The only catch is that this reviewer
found herself hooked by this lightweight but
intriguing tale of inebriated vicars, village fêtes,
giant marrows and espionage, and thus found the
first few chapters of the main story a little
slow-going until the plot built up steam!
This review was originally published in The BookBrowse Review in May 2007, and has been updated for the
June 2008 edition.
Click here to go to this issue.
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