To say this is a book about gardening is like saying The Odyssey is a book about travel. Yes, there’s a garden in it, and much practical information and knowledge of plants, soil, weather and fauna, but that’s merely one strand to a book that is a veritable tapestry of interweaving narrative threads. Among them are the history of Morville, the history of gardens and gardening, the monastic hours and monasticism, life as a newcomer to a village in Shropshire, the turning of the seasons, the turning of the heavens, splinters of autobiography and shards, like shattered glass, of the lives of two parents who imprinted their lives and passions, for good and suffering, upon their daughter.
As an exercise in writing, it’s close to perfect, both in its command of language and in the weaving together of these different narrative threads into a single story. In its emotional impact, particularly in the ways that unthinking comments from parents can sink a soul, it’s devastating. No one reading The Morville Hours is ever likely to forget that passage when, slipped casually into conversation, Swift’s mother says that giving birth to her daughter ruined her life. But these fragments of soul glass are counterbalanced by the serenity of the hours of prayer, the cycle of the seasons and the labour, always renewed, always new, that is the garden itself.
A book to read, slowly and well.
