So who is the girl in the garden?

The Girl in the Garden by Kamala Nair
Most books that I fall in love with have some sort of mystery to them. Not that they are mysteries, but some aspect of the story does not get revealed until later in the story. It keeps me wanting more, reading at every possible minute, and entangled in the story. That’s what The Girl in the Garden did for me. Although the mysteries are hardly shattering in most stories, just the idea of not knowing exactly what’s going to happen is enough. As I mentioned in the last blog, The Girl in the Garden is full of such mysteries. The story starts as a letter written by the main character to her fiancé. She leaves him in the middle of night to go to India to decide if she wants to marry him. Then she begins telling the story of her mother, and why whenever he asks her about her, she changes the subject. It was a bit of a stretch that the narrator actually wrote this whole story for her fiancé in a letter, but that device is really only brought up in the beginning and end of the story, so it’s easy enough to ignore. This story focuses on family relationships, forgiveness and hope. It’s a coming of age story with mystery—who could ask for anything more?