I’d heard such a lot of good things about this novel, particularly about the wonderful character of June Wilson – her unique point of view, her determination. June in the Garden is told from June’s perspective, describing the weeks following the death of her mother and her bid to find her biological father. At 22, she is bright and has a good eye for details, but is unable to filter out what matters or socialise well with others. When things are stressful, everything goes dark, and she loses it, not always able to remember what happened afterwards.
What June is really good at is gardening. So when her social worker tells her she must leave her council house in Scotland and offers her a bleak flat without a garden, or a hostel, June packs a bag and heads for the station. A letter with an address is all she has to go on, but there will be a few missteps along the way, including a ride in a police car, before she finally makes it to her father’s Notting Hill address. She’s not exactly welcomed here, but sneaks back to take up residence in the garden shed. Here at least she has an opportunity to be in her element – a rambling, if poorly maintained, garden.
The story follows June’s little adventures as she settles in and makes do with very little, the people she meets, including her young stepbrother and his dog, and her attempts to understand the common interactions of others, but which are often beguiling to June. Slowly she begins to make sense of this change in her life, particularly how things stand for her father and his second family. Will she ever win them over?
It all adds up to a charming feel-good story, with a brilliant neurodiverse character. We get June’s need for routine, her regimen of meals at a particular time each day, part of what keeps that crippling anxiety at bay. June still misses her mother, so she’s dealing with grief as well. But Mother is never far away, her urn safely in her bag or on a shelf in the shed. I loved her developing relationship with her stepbrother, twelve-year-old Henry, a sad and lonely boy, but someone she has to learn to trust.
We sit outside the house watching the policemen drive away. Mrs Wilson – not the Mrs Wilson that is my mother, but another one – is inside, in the living room, hovering near the window, staring at us. Mr Wilson is sitting on the doorstep beside me, gazing out past the red rose bushes and the copper-rusted gate to the street lined with dawn redwood trees and pink cherry blossoms. He is still very pale.
After a heated back and forth between the officers and my relatives of 16 Lansdowne Road, it was finally decided that no further action would be taken with regard to the ‘train station incident’. It was concluded that it was a ‘family matter’.
Family.
A word that has always sounded very strange to me. I looked it up once in a dictionary, which defined it as ‘descendants of a common ancestor‘. I am still unable to ascertain who this common ancestor of ours is.
But while the book is sympathetic and sensitive, it is not at all morose because June is such a triumph, so determined and honest. This adds to the humour of the story – not that we are laughing at June, but more at the way other people obfuscate, hiding their motives and feelings behind a facade of manners. June just blows a hole right through all that. And then there’s the gardens, particularly the flowers that June knows such a lot about. She’s got that botanical encyclopaedia with her for reference which she puts to good use.
If you feel like a charming, feel-good read, or have ever secretly thought a garden shed would be a nice place to live (with a few modifications, of course), June in the Garden might just be the thing. It’s a four-star read from me.
Judith McKinnon 