The Garden by Nick Newman

There is so much post-apocalyptic fiction around these days that it is hard to find a new angle into the genre. In The Garden, Nick Newman both does and doesn’t manage to find his way through this conundrum. He leans on some well-worn post-apocalyptic tropes (or at least allows readers to imagine them) but also delivers something a little different and poignant along the way.

Ageing sisters Evelyn and Lily live in a couple of rooms of an old stately house, eking out an existence by tending to the walled garden that surrounds their home. Into this strangely static environment comes a teenage boy (although his age is never really confirmed). At first Lily is suspicious but Evelyn sees the boy as a potential boon, someone who can help them tend the garden, and help with the many chores that are getting away from them. But then allegiances switch and the relationships between the three becomes more complicated. Through all of this are glimpses of the past, when the two sisters were still children, as the world was deteriorating and their parents make the decision to lock their gates and just hunker down.

The Garden works on the strength of the two sisters and their relationship. They are stuck in what is essentially a perpetual childhood, ignoring not only the outside world but inconvenient issues in their past. They often act like children, still beholden to the words of their long dead mother and her notes. But it appears that that are also able to do anything it takes to survive (leading to a number of increasingly predictable reveals).

But The Garden is also full of down the line post-apocalyptic tropes – the boy has come from some undefined place which it is implied is autocratic and unwelcoming. He is fleeing to somewhere “better” on the coast but is being pursued by… someone for… reasons? The climate is changing, not so much to stop the two women running a productive garden except for unprecedented weather events (particularly for what readers must presume in the United Kingdom). Newman does not delve too deeply into these aspects of the story, but rather relies on readers to fill in the blanks (if they want to) from other books of this genre.

While not every book needs to be about something, it is hard to know what Newman is trying to say in The Garden about issues like climate change and its impacts. So as a character study of two unique characters and their fraught relationship The Garden works. As a cautionary post-apocalyptic tale (if that was what was intended) less so.

The Garden by Nick Newman

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7.0/10