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Book Review of The White Garden

The White Garden
jscrappy avatar reviewed on + 59 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 2


I've read some of Stephanie Barron's mysteries before, and this book is slightly more ambitious, but also satisfying. Jo Bellamy, an American landscaper arrives at Sissinghurst (the former home of Harold Nicholson and Vita Sackville-West and their family) in England to study and copy the famous White Garden for a client. Jo is still reeling from the suicide of her grandfather two months before, a suicide which took place just days after she informed him that she would be traveling to Sissinghurst.

In a pile of debris in a shed at Sissinghurst, Jo uncovers a notebook with her grandfather's name on it. The notebook appears to have been written by Vita's friend Virginia Woolf--except that the book is dated *after* Woolf's suicide in 1941.

With the help of an attractive books expert from Sotheby's, Jo tries to solve the mystery of her grandfather and Virginia Woolf. Barron gives an entertaining twist to the lives of Virginia and Leonard Woolf, Sackville-West, Nicholson, John Maynard Keynes, and the world of Bloombury. A fun literary mystery.