Carol Wall

The publisher’s description of this memoir as “a white woman living in a lily-white neighborhood in Middle America” who befriends a male Kenyan gardener had me a little wary about simplifications and stereotypes. But I actually keep an eye out for books published by Amy Einhorn's imprint at Penguin … and my own yard needs work … and so I looked forward to a memoir that applied gardening metaphors to friendship and life.

Alas, I found the writing amateurish (overwritten, with poor show more time and content management) and the author prickly. But worse (I hate when this happens!), I found the publisher’s description inaccurate -- this is absolutely a breast-cancer memoir and a memoir about aging parents, woven with a thread about friendship ... with Giles Owita, who I did love and welcomed every time he came to the page. show less

Carol Wall's MISTER OWITA'S GUIDE TO GARDENING, a memoir of family, friendship and life-threatening illnesses, is something of a slow starter, with Wall telling of her childhood, marred by the death of an older sister, born with Down Syndrome and a heart defect and her own bout with a thymus condition, treated with radiation by an overzealous physician. She believes this treatment resulted in later neck and throat tumors removed during her adolescence. And later, as an adult, she endured show more breast cancer and its debilitating chemo treatments.

But, despite all of these illnesses, she seems to have made a good life as a high school English teacher with her lawyer husband, Dick, who she married when she was only twenty and he nineteen, both still in college. They raised three children who all seem to have turned out well and live in a comfortable home in Roanoke. But now Wall is coping with the decline of her aged parents - her mother is failing physically and suffers a series of strokes and her father has Alzheimer's. And then Wall herself has not just one more recurrence of breast cancer, but two, resulting finally in a double mastectomy and more chemo and radiation and all of the awful side effects. She does not suffer these multiple setbacks gracefully; her husband bears the brunt of her worst doubts, fears and crises of faith (she is a devout Catholic convert).

But she finds solace in the close if guarded friendship she has formed with a Kenyan immigrant named Giles Owita, who she learns belatedly is much more than just her 'gardener.' He holds a Ph.D. in horticulture and practices a Zen-like attitude towards life and all living things. She comes to know his wife and children too and learns their story and sad family secrets.

And yes, this 'slow starter' soon began to suck me in as the misfortunes of both families began to multiply. Through the medium of plants and gardening the friendship between 'Mrs Wall' and 'Dr Owita' deepens and takes on a meaningful and touching 'professor-student' nature as successive setbacks and tragedies befall both families.

Wall's memoir covers a lot of ground: the inevitable ups and downs of a long marriage, coping with serious illness, loss and letting go, fear and misunderstanding, religious faith, and - perhaps most of all - the importance of friendship, because Giles Owita becomes a true friend, and is a man you will not soon forget.

This is a book which will probably resonate most with women readers, because of its in-depth documentation of the terrors associated with the diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer. Wall went through it all more than once and each time it tested her marriage and shook her religious beliefs. Because of her blunt honesty in telling of her travails, Wall sometimes comes across as a bit neurotic, maybe even a whiner. But, to be fair, she had reason for her vigilance and hypochondria. She'd already been through it all and was terrified of a reoccurrence. Men - husbands - should read this book too. Highly recommended. show less

I do not have the greenest of thumbs. When I bought some of the broccoli, spinach, and lettuce plants that the high school horticulture class had babied along from seed, I brought them home and placed them in the sunniest spot I could find in the house as I figured it was too cold to put these tender little things outside. Two weeks later, they were still alive but crawling with aphids. I painstakingly pinched every tiny aphid and egg I could find every other day while cursing my original show more impulse to buy them. My daughter mentioned my struggles to the horticulture teacher who told her that they're winter plants and should be planted outside. I breathed a sigh of relief and did that. They promptly died. Clearly I'm cursed. And I don't think I'm meant to garden. So I was intrigued by Carol Wall's memoir, Mister Owita's Guide to Gardening, about her own gardening shortfalls that were turned around by the wonderful man she hired to bring order and beauty into her neglected, overgrown yard.

Carol Wall hated flowers. They symbolized death to her and so when she hired her neighbor's new gardener, Mr. Owita, to tackle her own yard, one of the first things that she asks of him is that he pull out the gaudy azalea bushes a former owner had planted. He quietly ignores this particular instruction as he starts to transform Wall's yard. As Mr. Owita makes inroads in the yard, he and Wall start to develop a tentative friendship as well, sharing little tidbits about their lives and families. Soon the tentative friendship blossoms into a much deeper friendship with each of them confiding some of their hopes and fears in each other. He is consoling as she walks the difficult path of caring for and eventually losing aging, ill parents and grapples with her own scary diagnosis. She wants to help him and his wife bring their daughter over from Kenya to join the family they've made in the US.

As she tells of the blessing of friendship with Mr. Owita, Wall also reflects on the many things he's taught her: gardening, certainly and an appreciation for flowers and their ephemerality but also equanimity in the face of obstacles, an acceptance of the cycle of life, simple gratitude, courage, and the importance of kindness and forgiveness for all. Through her assumptions about this poor Kenyan immigrant, who in actual fact holds a doctorate, she must face her own prejudices, horrified to find that she has any at all. She witnesses his caring interest in his fellow human beings, his tranquility, his contented joy in life, and his simple but important and powerful acts of nurturing both people and plants. She sees the contrast in his approach to life and her own rage against circumstances that she cannot change and the ways that it hurts her and those she loves. From him, she learns to dig in the dirt and to envision future beauty.

A very personal and moving memoir, this is very definitely a love letter to a remarkable friend. It is a lovely and engrossing read that will enchant memoir readers looking for more than just another dysfunctional life story. Although there's not perfection here, in either Wall's or Mr. Owita's lives, and there are seemingly insurmountable obstacles to overcome, there isn't the dysfunction so common in the genre. Wall looks honestly at her own past and the battles she has fought. She doesn't shy away from detailing the times when she thought Mr. Owita's advice was wrong or too hard, only to discover that his advice was in fact the thing that she most needed to hear. He turned around more than her yard; he helped her to change how she views the world and her place in it. And he helped her see the beauty in her azaleas. show less

What a beautiful way to show the power of relationships developing through the sharing of life issues over time---and all originating over the terrible condition of Wall's yard! Wall writes beautifully about all of her emotions through her health issues and about her personal connections with family and friends over the years. Everything connects with Mister Owita as the two of them share their lives, always connecting through the state of her "compound." Owita is truly a magical sort of show more person but his magic is slowly uncovered in this memoir and it's fascinating as well as heartbreaking as she shows us how powerful misconceptions are in our lives and the harm they can do. A lovely book---well worth reading and absorbing. show less