Robert Hichens (1864–1950)

I spotted this at a used bookstore when I was newly back from Oxford, finishing my thesis in Vancouver, and in such a whirlpool of Wilde that I don't think I could've even appreciated the amusement of it. Two years later it reminds me of how entrenched I once was, but how much I still love it all.

I wouldn't recommend this book for entertainment unless you are really already interested in Wilde's history and aesthetic life & philosophy of the 1890s, because it is so very specific to that show more ethos. The things Amarinth says are completely over-the-top, but they're very much in the style of Wilde and I think if you took a few phrases out of context, just before they become ridiculous, I'd have a hard time identifying whether they were genuinely Wilde or not. Everything is rose-coloured and gilded and shimmering purple.

It would be so easy to write a paper about Lady Locke's anxiety about the green carnation. Much too easy, really. This is not subtle satire, there is nothing cloaked here, and I'm sure it's not just my background in Wilde's life & times that makes me say so. show less

The book opens with a chapter describing Lord Reginald Hastings’s languid and self-adhering preparation for going out. It is a portrayal that makes him unsympathetic.
Reggie visits the Belgrave Square home of Mrs. Windsor, whose other guests include Esmé Amarinth. Both he and Mrs. Windsor hope to secure Reggie’s indolent life of beauty by marrying him to the riches of the other guest that evening, Lady Locke, Mrs. Windsor’s young widowed cousin. And Reggie, not disinclined, undertakes show more a diffident courtship of Lady Locke when the scene shifts to the country, where Mrs. Windsor invites them for a week in her cottage.
Lady Locke soon catches on and prepares herself for the expected proposal. At first, she’s amenable, although her feelings toward Reggie are more maternal than amorous. But, above all, Reggie confuses her. Early on, she says to herself: “I can’t understand him. . . . He seems to be talented, and yet an echo of another man, naturally good-hearted, full of horrible absurdities, a gentleman, and yet not a man at all. He says himself that he commits every sin that attracts him, but he does not look wicked. What is he? Is he being himself, or is he being Mr. Amarinth, or is he merely posing, or is he really hateful, or is he only whimsical, and clever, and absurd? What would he have been if he had never seen Mr. Amarinth?”
Her feelings turn to fury when she overhears Reggie promising her son, Tommy, a green carnation (Reggie and Esmé wear a fresh one in the lapel each day).
The green carnation is, of course, a potent symbol. Green is the color most closely associated with nature, but in a carnation, it is unnatural.
The green carnation was also, notoriously, concocted by Oscar Wilde. Indeed, the two men in the novel are modeled on Wilde and his notorious young companion, Lord Alfred (“Bosie”) Douglas. Moreover, the conversation abounds in Wildean epigrams, many of them, I learned after finishing the book, overheard on the lips of Wilde and Lord Douglas by Hichens.
Amarinth is depicted as an effete aesthete and playwright of minor achievement.
The novel tries to be light-hearted, but by making a brave choice—in England, 1894—to tackle “unnatural vice,” it makes its task difficult. In addition, some of the modest pleasure I took from the book was diminished when I learned that it was introduced as evidence when Wilde was put on trial two years after this book’s publication.
And as for Lady Locke’s speculation that Amarinth has corrupted Reggie—well, in the case of Oscar and Bosie, let’s say that is open to interpretation. show less

A one-word description of this book might be "overwrought." On the one hand, it is the romance to end all romances, but on the other hand, it is also a story of religious ecstasy in the context of Catholic faith. At some point, the romantic and religious rapture seem to merge, and in the end one is destroyed by the other. The reader is carried away by all this euphoria through an environment of living, breathing and loving the northern Sahara desert, descriptions of which are almost as show more infinite as the Sahara itself.

It is small wonder that The Garden of Allah was used by Hollywood not once, but three times as the basis for a desert romance, the most recent in 1936 starring Marlene Dietrich and Charles Boyer, with Basil Rathbone thrown in for good measure. The movie pales by comparison to the book. It doesn't begin to convey the intensity of emotion found on the printed page. And it turns the plot upside down and in so doing loses significant elements of drama that lead to an actual climax in the book that is entirely missing in the film.

To be sure The Garden of Allah is a product of its time. According to Yesterday's Bestsellers: A Journey through Literary History by Brian Stableford (1998), it is very much in the vein of Marie Corelli's fiction which was very popular at the turn of the last century. She too managed to turn romantic love into a religious experience when elements of the occult and religious fervor were almost commonplace in some types of fiction.

The central figure of the novel — as opposed to the movie — is a thirtyish aristocratic Englishwoman, aptly named Domini, whose life has been quite sheltered in spite of her age and wealth. She embarks on a voyage of self-discovery which takes her to the Algerian desert. On her way to Beni-Mara, an oasis where the railroad line ends and the northern edge of the desert begins, she encounters a boorish man named Boris who seems to lack the most basic manners. They end up at the same hotel and every time they meet in passing, he repeatedly manifests such rudeness that she comes to believe his is a destructive personality.

Inexplicably — and I mean it: it is never explained, at all — Domini and Boris get married against the better judgment of the local priest, a friendly Italian count who has seen Boris in action and, of course, a native sand diviner who has foretold Domini's future with forbidding overtones. Directly after the wedding, the two lovebirds embark on a voyage into the desert, complete with sandstorm, camel caravan, Arab retainers, boundless dunes and mirages. This desert honeymoon symbolizes the self-discovery that continues for both Domini and Boris and becomes a rite of passage that takes an unforeseen turn and results in an ending that could not have been predicted early on. Domini sets out in search of freedom and truth, and as the novel progresses it becomes more and more apparent that Boris's own search for freedom is blocked by a lack of truth.

Modern readers don't seem to care for the seemingly unending descriptions — in this case of love, religion, the desert — but I cannot help admiring Hichens' ability to use style, syntax and sentence structure to convey the buildup to a climax — most notably the passages describing their love on the wedding night. Remember, this is 1904, and the word "sex" appears nowhere in the 490 pages of this book. At the outset, I appreciated especially the picture of the desert community of Beni-Mara (based on the oasis town of Biskra in Algeria), the native denizens, and the beauty of the desert itself and its surrounding mountains. But as the novel wore on, even I began to tire of what began to seem like a repetitious overexposure of the protagonists, their love and their religion, but the desert never completely lost its magic. show less

I don't want to parrot what anyone else is saying, but this just feels most engaging in some ethereal sense. Can't decide whether this is a rambling riposte on (self) homophobia, a clever 'parotty' of horror tales, a stab at "the real thing," or a mash-up of all-of-the-above. Less than subtle double entendre using ejaculated for describing the priest's outburst when seemingly asked whether he found Guildea attractive. It served as entertainment on the go all the same.