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The Black Garden Reviewed By Lavanya Karthik of Bookpleasures.com
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Lavanya Karthik

Reviewer Lavanya Karthik: Lavanya is from Mumbai, India and is a licensed architect and consultant in environmental management. She lives in Mumbai with her husband and six-year old daughter. She loves reading and enjoys a diverse range of authors across genres.



 
By Lavanya Karthik
Published on December 18, 2010
 

Author: John S. McFarland

Publisher: The Patrice Press

ISBN: 978-1-880397-69-5

I do wish, however,  that the book cover gave away less of the plot; the suspense that Mcfarland’s writing  so skillfully maintains as his story hurtles towards its dramatic end, is  undermined by the overly helpful jacket summary .




Author: John S. McFarland

Publisher: The Patrice Press

ISBN: 978-1-880397-69-5

Click Here To Purchase The Black Garden


John McFarland’s’ The Black Garden’ borrows from the best traditions of  Southern Gothic horror, in its dark tale of a young woman battling an ancient evil. Reminiscent in tone and atmosphere to the work of Poe and Mary Shelley, ‘..Garden’  transports its readers to the confines of a small  French colonial village in the 1800s, where a  powerful malevolent force   preys on women who unwittingly submit to its advances.

It is 1882, and Perdita Baron –Reed has fled a sheltered life and dull fiancé in Boston to pursue her dreams of a life as a sculptor. Finding herself a position as teacher at a girls’ academy in the remote village of Ste. Odile, Perdita looks forward to a fresh start and the forging of new relationships.  But a  darkness hover over  the village, and deepens with the arrival of the sinister yet strangely enigmatic Orien Bastide, wealthy landowner and benefactor. 

Masked at all times to hide his severe disfigurement (the results, he claims, of a degenerative disease), Bastide  seems drawn less by physical beauty than by the spark of intellect in the women he targets. ”You seem to want to sap the intellectual, the human energy out of all around you,” Perdita observes towards the end of the book, as she confronts him.

Given the close minded sensibilities of the time, it is easy to see why Bastide succeeds  - he panders to their intellect, engages them in conversations that no other  man would consider them capable of, admires aspects of their personality they would hesitate to express in conventional society.   “A person who will make your mind and your opinions legitimate by listening to you, “ gushes Solana, a friend of Perdita’s who soon catches Bastide’s eye, ‘..by taking seriously anything you have to say, when you are   so unused to that legitimization elsewhere in life; that is a gift, don’t you agree?”

A gift, Perdita soon finds, that comes with a curse all its own. For it is only a matter of time before she attracts Bastide’s  attention and, as the people she loves  begin to die around her, realizes she may be the one person capable of destroying him, and saving future generations of women from his clutches.

McFarland captures the claustrophobic social milieu of the period skillfully; his strong female protagonists are victims of an oppressive society, curbed by prejudice and stuffy morality , long before they are Bastide’s. I enjoyed the way the narrative progressed, interspersed generously with letters exchanged  between Perdita, her Bostonian friend Moira and Hypolitte, potential suitor, allowing us periodic respite from the increasingly sinister environs of Ste. odile, yet never quite enough to loosen the tension the author relentlessly builds up.   

I do wish, however,  that the book cover gave away less of the plot; the suspense that Mcfarland’s writing  so skillfully maintains as his story hurtles towards its dramatic end, is  undermined by the overly helpful jacket summary .


Click Here To Purchase The Black Garden