GARDEN BY THE SEA BY MERCÈ RODOREDA TRANSLATED BY MARUXA RELAÑO & MARTHA TENNENT
In Garden By The Sea, Mercè Rodoreda chronicles the events of six summers in Geneva, where a wealthy couple and their friends pass the time swimming, skiing, filming, and throwing elaborate parties. The family’s gardener, who often learns intimate details secondhand from other family employees, observes their entangled lives and passions with a quiet curiosity and records their story. One summer, a new villa is constructed next door, and with the arrival of the owner and his family, the lighthearted evenings turn to the direction of lost love, nostalgia, and the cost of working one's way up in the world.
The story itself is familiar, reminiscent of other explorations of love and class. However, the gardener, as the focalizer of this novel, offers something unusual and moving in his perspective. Rather than judging or criticizing the residents of the villas for their entitled and often strange, self-destructive behaviors, he observes them in the way he observes his garden, simply marking the passing of time, and the necessary changes that are brought by new seasons. Near the beginning of the novel, he explains himself by saying: “This tree…has witnessed much grief and much joy. And it does not change. It has taught me to be what I am, with each leaf like a sickle, and each bud a lead box holding a velvety red flower.” Through this temperate tone (broken only in moments where he discusses plants, suddenly passionate) the gardener maintains a practice in attentiveness and compassion, and alongside him, the reader does too. Lush and meticulous, Rodoreda (alongside translators Maruxa Relaño and Martha Tennent) creates a sensation of the repetitions of life, and the moments that stand in sharp contrast.
—Review by Joy Clark
