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The Savage Garden Mark Mills 9780007161935 Books

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The Savage Garden Mark Mills 9780007161935 Books

This book is well written and the words are beautifully descriptive. However, I must admit I felt like I was taking a course in art history and literature while on a tour of Italy rather than immersed in the intrigue and suspense of two murder mysteries, which is okay but definitely not what I expected.
What I wonder is how did Adam with his lack of experience and laissez-faire attitude solve the two murder mysteries surrounding Villa Docci? He was manipulated and directed by other characters throughout the story. Bothe the characters of Adam and his brother, Harry, lacked sophistication as did their back story which diminished the book. They were two college kids seeking good food, wine and amore on summer holiday. I am still not certain if Adam had the ability to solve the mystery of the garden.
I liked the author's first book better than this one.


Tags : The Savage Garden [Mark Mills] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. A haunting tale of murder, love and innocence lost set in post-war Tuscany from the award winning author of `The Whaleboat House`,Mark Mills,The Savage Garden,See notes,000716193X,Fiction,Mystery,Crime & mystery

The Savage Garden Mark Mills 9780007161935 Books Reviews

Terrific read, I couldn't put it down. Fabulous journey with much intrigue. Very talented writer.
This is a completely captivating mystery I was mesmerized by the interlocking puzzles of art and history. The narrator, the undergraduate who uncovers two murders, one from a decade ago, the other hundreds of years earlier, while spending summer in Italy working on his thesis, is a very likeable protagonist. The atmospheric romance and mystery reminded me of Alain Fournier's "The Wanderer" and the fascination of the investigation kept me as spellbound as one of my favorite historical murder mysteries, Josephine Tey's "The Daughter of Time."
Under the incomparable skies of Tuscany, murder is brewing in the Docci family villa and, lucky for us, the tour guide is a young graduate student with a fresh viewpoint. Alex Strickland, a young Brit, is sent to the Villa Docci outside Siena to make a possible thesis project out of its unusual memorial garden. Unformed and haphazard, he limps onto the scene with every intention of making quick work of this project and lifting as much of the material as possible from existing sources.

From the start, in Adam's mind, something's not right with the garden. Is it more than a tribute by a wealthy Renaissance landowner to his young-in-death wife, Flora? With the assistance of the villa's matriarch, Francesca, he starts to reach back to the past in an attempt to make sense of the garden's unusual layout and features. But something is also not right in the present - it is fourteen years after WWII and for all that time, the top floor of the villa has been locked and off-limits. It was the scene of what first seemed like a straightforward murder of Francesca's son by German occupiers. But Adam is never easy with the explanation and, as if the garden wasn't enough to keep him busy, he delves into a matrix of complicated relationships, especially those between brothers.

It was such a great idea to stage this in the near past after WWII when so much of life and society was in flux and there was such a division between those who sacrificed so much to the war and those who were only young enough to barely remember it. What Adam thinks he finds are murders separated by 400 years and a family that has a collective history of darkness, obsession, and instability...and yet has survived the losses of centuries to keep its lands and possessions intact. Or is this just the over-active imagination of an idle young man who has his own sibling issues? The journey to the answer is a good one and Mills paces the story perfectly. Along the way, we also get lessons in classical mythology, philosophy, evolution, and the unification of the Italian city states. A definitely good read.
This is the 2nd book I have read by this author, and I really love his work. I tend to gravitate toward series work, as it often takes me awhile to become invested in the charscters. Not so with Mills' works. The plot, the settings, historical background - all fascinating. The character development superb. I will be reading each of his works.
While always in search of a storyline that is both unique and well written, I have found that it is often difficult to find a book that satisfies on both levels. The Savage Garden was just such a book for me. Admittedly, the mystery surrounding the origins of the Villa Docci garden was, in retrospect, not all that surprising but the facts were cleverly laid out and both the main and ancillary characters were wonderful because of their idiosyncracies. The central characters were warm and very real, in spite of their obvious flaws. I also very much enjoyed the banter between Adam, the English student researching the garden, and his brother Harry. While Harry was not a central character, his participation in the story was formative of Adam's character and, more specifically, their own family's ordinariness and Adam's lack of perception about their familial issues. Their interchanges provided some of the lighter and more humorous dialog in the book. Above all, the book was so very well written. Beautiful language was evocative of the beautiful landscape as well as wonderfully descriptive of the characters. It was incredibly enjoyable....
This is a mystery in two times, set in Tuscany. In the 1950's, Cambridge graduate student Adam, is searching for a thesis project. His adviser offers him the opportunity to study a memorial garden at a Tuscan villa belonging to an old friend. The garden is from the 15th century and was popularly presented as a memorial to the villa owner's wife, Flora. Adam accepts and travels to Italy to begin his investigation. Not only does he find some curious inconsistencies in the garden, he begins to suspect that a family tragedy leading to the death of the family's eldest son at the villa at the end of WWII, purportedly at the hands of the Nazis may also be a cover-up. Adam comes to some startling revelations on both fronts, as he grows closer to the daughter of the family. When his life is placed in danger, he begins to believe that he has been manipulated in the whole situation. We wait to see if Adam can now figure out two mysteries and find out who is behind the scenes pulling the strings. This was an intriguing mystery with many intertwining pieces.
This book is well written and the words are beautifully descriptive. However, I must admit I felt like I was taking a course in art history and literature while on a tour of Italy rather than immersed in the intrigue and suspense of two murder mysteries, which is okay but definitely not what I expected.
What I wonder is how did Adam with his lack of experience and laissez-faire attitude solve the two murder mysteries surrounding Villa Docci? He was manipulated and directed by other characters throughout the story. Bothe the characters of Adam and his brother, Harry, lacked sophistication as did their back story which diminished the book. They were two college kids seeking good food, wine and amore on summer holiday. I am still not certain if Adam had the ability to solve the mystery of the garden.
I liked the author's first book better than this one.