The Wonder Garden

After reading all the praise, I had to try this collection of short stories for myself. My high praise shows up as this crow. Several reviewers compared her writings to John Cheever, which I can see because of the constant suburban setting, but she has some very unique, sometimes unsettling, plot twists of her very own. The stories are interrelated, with some characters showing up, or mentioned, in many of the stories. At times, the previously mentioned characters are scampering around on the edges of another story, and other times they're upfront and face-on.
This is an upscale suburbia, but different, and more contemporary, than the meetings over the ever-presnt cocktails of Cheever's stories. I am still thinking — and a little show more haunted — by the man who bribes a surgeon to be allowed into the operating theater during his wife's brain surgery, and allowed to reach out and actually touch her exposed brain.
There's a lot of stress in these wealthy homes, and it was interesting to read about how the author enjoys driving around her very own neighborhood in Westchester County, New York, imaging what lurks within the restored and sometimes McMansioned homes.
I found these stories very good, very clever, and I'm glad that I made that suburban trip again. show less

What a wonderful collection of connected stories. As a child in Chicago, I remember walking past houses on my block, and making up stories with my friends about what was happening in those houses. This is what these stories are, a personal glimpse behind doors of the people who live on Old Cranbury road. So very interesting because some of the characters,receive multiple points of view, so in some of the stories we see what people think of a certain family and then we are treated to a glimpse of what the actual family is like, by the family themselves. Absolutely brilliant. Plus I liked every story which is always a big plus.

The format of The Wonder Garden was a lot like Olive Kitteridge but with the short stories focused on a community rather than on an individual. Near the middle of the book the stories clicked together for me and I started going back to reread passages, seeing the dynamics in a whole new light. Although light might not be the right word because much of it, to quote the book, was "mired with its own dark disturbances" (quote is from a galley proof) and several of the characters' perverse self-righteousness was unsettling.

I received this book for free through the goodreads First Reads program

[b:The Wonder Garden|24794058|The Wonder Garden|Lauren Acampora|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1422832056s/24794058.jpg|42713559]


Lauren Acampora, the author

"They'd come as a pair of anthropologists to masquerade among the natives, or so Mark had thought, to mirror their culture and borrow from its abundance.They were not supposed to adopt it, they were not supposed to blend."

From The Wonder Garden- Elevations


If you've even taken a stroll around your neighborhood and wonder what happens inside your neighbor's homes, who they truly are in their privacy of their lives and what secrets are held behind those walls, [b:The Wonder Garden|24794058|The Wonder Garden|Lauren Acampora|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1422832056s/24794058.jpg|42713559] show more might be the ticket to indulge some of those voyeuristic tendencies.

Set in the fictional New England town of Old Cranbury, Acampora's narrative on these great collection has been described by critics as the one of an urban anthropologist, fascinated with the customs and rituals of its residents and determined to unearthed the secret lives of its suburbanites.

[b:The Wonder Garden|24794058|The Wonder Garden|Lauren Acampora|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1422832056s/24794058.jpg|42713559] includes 13 interconnected stories that not only portrait the inhabitants of Old Cranbury, but also the houses they lived in, which play an important role in many of them.

Some of these homes, located in the historical district part of town, date back to the 18th century and many of the residents take pride in preserving their original structure. Albeit some of them are more obsessed with this mission than others.
The author's penchant for providing architectural details and description of historical artifacts was very interesting.
So Acampola seems to me to write both with the perspective of an Anthropologist and an Archaeologist.

The way the book is structured helps keep the reader engaged as you keep finding that characters from previous stories suddenly make an appearance a few stories later.

The brilliance of Acampora's writing is that when these "old" characters reappear they haven't been frozen in time but rather have continue to develop and grow.
This serves as a sort of "plot acceleration mechanism" that gives the reader a sense of reading a novel rather than one of short stories, but also provides its characters with more layers and nuance than you'd expect on this type of genre.

The characters comes in all shapes and forms, there are married couples, single people, parents, children, doctors, artists and spiritual leaders.
At first glance Old Cranbury looks like just another affluent, conventional town. But underneath its seemingly pleasant facade and its picture-perfect Victorian houses, we soon get to discover some of its most bizarre and disturbed residents.

Throughout these stories we witness school boards arguments, judgmental neighbors that see themselves as the "torchbearers, defenders of the original residents and their ideals", quarrels over zoning and renovations plans and tensions over parenting styles.

Here is a brief description of some of my favorites stories:

The Wonder Garden- In the collection’s title story, we follow a Christian housewife who welcomes a Bangladeshi foreign exchange student into her home, a decision that eventually leads to unexpected results.

Floortime- It's about a mother struggling to reach her autistic son and who is desperate enough to consider using unconventional methods to achieve this goal.

Elevations- About an aging gay couple struggles with their relationship and how their respective life journeys and personal growth has taken them apart .

Swarm- A rich couple commissions a retired teacher with artistic aspirations to design giant insects to cover every external wall of their colonial home.

The Umbrella Bird- Describes the story of a woman who must come to terms with her husband's drastic and unexpected career change.

Moon Roof- Which I found fantastic, it's about a woman's inability to move into traffic, the whole story takes place while she's in her car frozen and seemingly unable to do anything. This experience would ultimately allow her to explore personal issues she has previously neglected to confront.

Although each story can be read as a stand-alone, I think that reading them in order would give the reader a better understanding and a more satisfactory reading experience.

The book offers some hints of social commentary but for the most part these characters remain completely involved in their privileged bubble, incapable of seeing beyond their suburban needs and their "keeping up with the Joneses mentality".

[b:The Wonder Garden|24794058|The Wonder Garden|Lauren Acampora|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1422832056s/24794058.jpg|42713559] it's a wonderful, deliciously bizarre collection of short stories written with depth and beautiful language. Although many of these characters are often odd, they are also deeply human, therefore easy to relate to.

With its dark and creepy set of stories but also its refreshingly creative writing, I must definitely recommend this jewel of a book! show less

Each chapter details the particular neurosis of a particular person or family in the same Connecticut town. The stories intersect in interesting ways and leaves the reader with the feeling that Connecticut is best avoided.

This is a book of related short stories about the residents of a small New England town. The connections are subtle and since I didn't read this book quickly I didn't always remember the links between stories right away. I actually skimmed through the whole thing after finishing to fully connect all the dots and to firm up the connections in my head.

I enjoy this type of book and I mostly enjoyed this too but I was disappointed that so many of the stories left without resolution. I want to know just a little bit more.

Overall enjoyed this book of connected stories immensely. Setting all of the stories in a small town allowed characters to be introduced slightly in one story and then more exposed through another. A good reminder of how little we know about what's really going on in other people's lives. Many of the stories were excellent but there were several weaker links, especially the last few.