The theme for Spell The Month in Books this month is nature. This proved harder than I expected so some of my choices have only a tangential link to the theme.
Links will take you to reviews where they exist.
M
Frost in May by Antonia White
This choice is based purely on the weather event which can cause unexpected distress for gardeners in the UK — late frosts.
This was my first experience of Virago Modern Classics and though I’ve long forgotten the details, I do remember the effect this story of a clash between a young girl and the authoritarian regime of her convent school, had on me.
A
The Enchanted April by Elizabeth Von Armin
Von Arnim’s novel see four women — all unknown to each other — rent a medieval castello in Portofino for an early spring holiday. There the magic of the castle and its gardens help them deal with their unhappiness with life and their relationships. The individual characters are fascinating but what is really enchanting about this novel are the descriptions of the lush gardens surrounding the castello.
On their first morning the women throw open their bedroom windows to behold wisteria “tumbling over itself in its excess of life” and terraces lade with fig, peach and cherry trees dropping away to the sea. By the end of the holiday, nature is in even greater profusion, the women departing among a cloud of acacia scent.
No one had noticed how many acacias there were till one day the garden was full of a new scent, and there were the delicate trees, the lovely successors to the wisteria, hung all over among their trembling leaves with blossom … the whole garden dressed itself gradually towards the end in white, and grew more and more scented.
Y
Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brookes
Natural remedies play a key part in this novel about a real life event in the seventeenth century when bubonic plague reached the small village of Eyam in England’s Peak District. The village’s wise women use their deep knowledge of herbs and roots to try and stem the spread of an infection but they are treated with great suspicion — are they healers or are they in fact responsible for the high fever and supperating pustules from which villagers begin to succumb?
If you fancy having a go at Spell the Month, you’ll find all the info you need on the website of the host, Reviews From the Stacks. The theme for July is “Red, White or Blue” – books which have those colours in their title.
We're all friends here. Come and join the conversation