Book: The Lantern

 

Author: Deborah Lawrenson

 

Genre: Romance/Mystery/Supernatural/Fiction/Travel

 

Summary (from flap of Harper edition): “Meeting Dom was the most incredible thing that had ever happened to me …” When Eve falls for the secretive, charming Dom in Switzerland, their whirlwind relationship leads them to Les Genevriers, an abandoned house in a rural hamlet in the fragrant lavender fields of the south of France. Each enchanting day delivers happy discoveries: hidden chambers, secret vaults, a beautiful wrought-iron lantern. Deeply in love, surrounded by music, books, and the heady summer scents of the French countryside, Eve has never felt more alive. But with autumn’s arrival, the days begin to cool-and so, too, does Dom. Though Eve knows he bears the emotional scars of a failed marriage-which he refuses to talk about-his silence arouses suspicion and uncertainty. And like its owner, Les Genevriers is also changing. Bright, warm rooms have turned cold and uninviting; shadows now fall unexpectedly; and Eve senses a presence moving through the garden. As the grand house’s strange and troubling mysteries begin to unfold, she must uncover every secret …  before dark history can repeat itself. -Harper, 2012.

The author, Deborah Lawrenson, set this novel in the beautiful scenic backdrop Faro, Portugal.  Our protagonist, Joanna Millard, is a journalist.  She’s taking time off and running from a broken relationship.  While in Portugal, she’s studying Portuguese at a local Language School.  One of the other English students, Nathan Emberlin befriends her.  A younger guy.  She assumes he’s a party guy and not much more, but then he approaches her to help him with some research and everything about Nathan seems to change.  He wants her to find out about a man he knows as Terry Jackson.  In addition, he needs to understand more about a child who was kidnapped here more than two decades prior.

 

After a bit of research into local news archives, she connects with Ian Rylands, a historian.  He provides her with a book, The Alliance written by American Esta Hartford in the late forties.  Ian leads Joanna to believe that the story written as fiction is actually true.  The Alliance related the experience of a couple and their association with Germany during WWII.  This all seemed far-fetched from the information she was seeking.  Could it all be connected?

 

Because of the introduction to The Alliance, 300 Days of Sun actually became two books – a story within a story.  I hadn’t expected this and would rather have had our protagonist, Joanna, summarize it as it related to her research.  The beginning of this novel was most interesting and moved at a rather quick pace.  The sideline into The Alliance drew away from the plot and slowed the story down.  It’s clear the author did due diligence in researching Portugal’s past as it connected to WWII giving the reader a realistic feel — yet the story itself is pure fiction.  Rating: 3 out of 5.

Since this story is not just a dual narrative but a triple narrative, for the full explanation you’ll want to visit goodreads. The first storyline follows a British garden designer hoping a commission on a beautiful island will be her chance to break into the international scene. However, once she realizes that her clients are eccentric and possibly malicious, she’s not sure the job is worth the risk. The second story is that of a young blind woman living in Nazi-occupied France with a difficult decision to make. And the third story is that of a British intelligence agent during WWII who falls for a French agent who disappears, suggesting he might have had hidden allegiances. The way these three stories connect is a surprise.

The first scene in this book immediately highlighted the author’s amazing talent for bringing a location vividly to life. I think what made her descriptions work so well for me is the level of detail she includes. It’s not too much, not too little, matching what I think I’d notice if I were actually there. The first story was not as enjoyable as I expected based on that first scene. It was a bit trippy, with hints of the supernatural or a conspiracy or both. I found it a little too confusing and finished this section unsure what had just happened. By the end, I considered this first section worthwhile for its impact on the story as a whole, but I didn’t love reading it.

The second and third stories were both fantastic. I continued to enjoy the author’s evocative writing but also started to love the plot. Both of these sections featured somewhat untraditional, very brave female protagonists. I thought they were both incredible and a ton of fun to read about. The layering of the three stories, each one adding more information and getting closer to the heart of the matter, gave this story a lot of depth. It was a very unique way to tell a multi-narrative story, sequential instead of alternating, and I think it worked beautifully. The overall effect was to give the ending a lot of emotional impact. I admire the author’s choice to tell a story in a unorthodox way and would love to read more of her work.

This review first published on Doing Dewey.

In establishing her main story as three separate and distinct novellas, Ms. Lawrenson thankfully dispatches with the overused plot device of multiple narrators and multiple time periods. Instead, she creates three full-fleshed separate and distinct stories that are thoroughly enjoyable individually but outstanding when viewing them as a sum of their parts. In so doing, she challenges the reader to remember certain facts and events from one book to the next, but this is never a hardship. The three stories are delightful, exquisite in their imagery, and achingly memorable for their emotion and historical context.

Because The Sea Garden is three novellas under one cover, it becomes difficult pigeonhole the entire novel into one genre. For, while “The Lavender Field” and “A Shadow Life” do take place during World War II, they are more than historical fiction. Similarly, “The Sea Garden” is not just contemporary fiction. In all three, there is action, suspense, drama, more than a little psychology, love, some young adult drama, and more. There is even a hint of a gothic otherworldliness to round out the genre mash-up. In many ways, Ms. Lawrenson uses the combination of genres to create as realistic a story as possible because life itself never falls into one category. She creates a frighteningly true-to-life fictional story by seamlessly hybridizing genres and focusing on the story rather than on the mechanics. The reader gets the pleasure of reading three amazing stories without having to worry about continuity because the continuity takes care of itself by the end of the third story.

The Sea Garden’s collective novellas are each atmospheric and simply gorgeous pieces of fiction. The settings are lush and achingly life-like; one expects to smell the ocean breezes or the lavender upon turning the page. The characters are well-developed and real. The little mysteries are fascinating and hold fast a reader’s attention. The way she connects each story to the other is brilliantly subtle and quite effective. The whole novel becomes an active reading experience that is a pure joy.