I came at this predisposed to discard it without mercy. It was an impulse purchase because I used to love a TV series of that same title. At least I think it was the same title; a documentary about what goes on in the backyard when the humans are not around.

Anyway, I tend to view any book which has a "Reader's Guide" at the back as being pretentious and rarely needing a guide to read. So that was a sort of First Strike.

Second Strike: On page 3 there were "breasts straining against the material" of a woman's dress.

It nearly earned Strike 3 because of some weird descriptive terms, a man was "rock-ribbed"? A woman had a "crooked" gleam in her eye? However, I was feeling merciful and also too lazy to pick out a new book to read, plus, the topic fit right in with my recent reads of Dante and Greek mythology. So I kept reading.

I forgave the author his lackluster descriptions, because I am also reading essays by M.F.K. Fisher, and nothing can compare to her prose. I also forgave him the total lack of feeling that the book was set in the 1950s instead of present day. I'm not sure how he could have made it feel like the 1950s, but I know authors do, and he didn't. It wasn't just me, because I read several reviews that mentioned the same displacement. I also forgave him the stupid sex scenes that felt like he was either being pressured by a publisher to "make it racy" or it was the only way he could get across that his protagonist was a young, inexperienced and selfish man. There was not much of a mystery, and the supposed "trauma" the young protagonist experienced that was a "life changing" experience, did not seem like a big deal to me.

That seems like a lot of negatives for me to still give it a three star review, and yet that is what I will give it; only because I enjoyed the story of the garden which brought in Dante and Greek mythology.

I certainly won't be seeking out other works from this author. ( )

Really enjoyed story of a student exploring the history of a garden in Italy. ( )

Ne avevo letto una recensione entusiasta che sosteneva si trattasse di un romanzo ambientato nel giardino di Bomarzo, o meglio, nel Giardino dei Mostri di Bomarzo.

In realtà vi fa riferimento di sfuggita e non si capisce perché nel titolo si definisca "selvaggio" ciò che non lo è, probabilmente una traduzione dal titolo originale "The savage garden", dove "savage" è stato tradotto in "selvaggio" ma forse, in questo caso, sarebbe stato più appropriato "crudele".

E' un giardino con una storia antica, (che non esiste, o meglio di cui non ho trovato traccia in rete), di una villa d'epoca nei dintorni di Firenze (Villa Docci, anche questa inesistente) con statue che raffigurano situazioni ed emozioni, in cui si svolge un'indagine condotta da un giovane studente d'arte di Cambridge.

Infine, nulla di che, un po' di mistero un po' di sesso, un pochino di storia dell'arte (ma poca) un po' di Italia dell'immediato dopo guerra vista da un inglese.

Un altro libro da ombrellone, ma non finirà nelle mensole dei miei 100 libri della libreria.

(la mia libreria ha molti molti ripiani, 4 di questi sono dedicati ai miei 100 libri, che sono i libri di cui non farei a meno in caso di trasloco in una casa senza libreria). ( )

"When they start killing the men of ideas, you can be sure the Devil is laughing."

Cambridge art history student, Adam Strickland, travels to Tuscany in 1958 to work on the Renaissance garden of the Villa Docci near Florence. The garden was apparently created by a grieving husband in memory of his dead wife who died in 1548 aged 25 but Adam soon realises that the garden features some discordant iconography and that it harbours much darker secrets than is outwardly apparent, as does the villa itself. Soon, Adam is drawn into a complex mystery which shifts between the 16th century and the latter days of German Occupation in the country towards the end of WWII, and into the web of intrigue woven by the Docci family, which he tries to unravel with the aid of references found in Ovid and Dante.

Mills manages to paint a vivid depiction of a Renaissance garden complete with wooded glades, grottoes, temples, amphitheatres, classical statues and reflecting pools, however I felt that at times he simply went into too much unnecessary detail, made too many digressions into classical mythology or the evolution of orang-utans, meaning that although they had some minor bearings on the plot it sometimes lost its momentum.

Similarly although Mills subtly uses a suspicious death as a way of examining the scars left behind by war in tight knit communities and how families learn to cope in the aftermath, I felt that he failed to really consider quite why he had decided to set the story in 1958 other than the fact that it wasn't too long after the end of the war. This element of the novel somehow lacked the necessary authenticity, in particular I struggled to believe that young, unmarried women of the period would have such a carefree attitude to sex, even amongst University students and Italians.

Overall I found this a fun read that had been well researched but by no means a classic. ( )

Interesting historical thriller with plenty of twists and turns on the way, as student Adam studies a garden at Villa Docci as part of his thesis. What at first sight appears a rather boring assignment takes on new meaning as Adam uncovers the screts, contemporary and historical of the Doccis. I spotted one anachronism, a comparison with velcro which wouldn't have been widely known or used in the 1950s! ( )