The Garden, by Nick Newman: Review by Paul Di Filippo

The Garden, Nick Newman (Putnam’s 978-0593717738, hardcover, 400pp, $29.00) February 2025

Any SF reader worthy of the name must be conversant with The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, helmed by John Clute, et al. An online treasure house of knowledge, continuously updated and freely accessible, it’s a reference work I have relied on and quoted from innumerable times.

Less well-known is that team’s Encyclopedia of Fantasy. This mammoth volume had a hardcover printing in 1997, and that edition transitioned online shortly thereafter. Unlike the SFE, it has never been updated, its information frozen to represent the state of the art almost thirty years ago. Despite that fossilization, it too remains supremely handy.

One of the best things about the FE is its glossary of new and old terms useful for describing various fantasy scenarios. After all, if we can identify and label the parts of a fantasy novel, we can talk about it more intelligently.

One great term that Clute coined is “polder.” Basically, a polder is a walled enclave where life is different from threatening exterior circumstances. And wouldn’t you know, the polder entry contains this very sentence, germane to our novel under discussion today: “The size of the polder may vary widely. At its smallest it may be co-extensive with a Garden…”

Nick Newman’s first novel for adults (under his true name, Nicholas Bowling, he has written several YA books), depicts a polder par excellence. Given that all polders must by definition contain a limited number of characters and occupy a relatively small space, the author has his or her work cut out for them in maintaining the reader’s interest within such a narrow focus. The Garden features, at first, precisely two characters (a third arrives midway), and a venue consisting of a crumbling old house set on a few acres. Moreover, the characters inhabit only a single room of that house! The fact that Newman makes their story arcs compelling and the surroundings vivid is testament to his skills. (He does indulge in a few flashbacks, but they are also limited to the house!)

We soon come to recognize that our protagonists are living in a Post-Collapse situation. Outside their walled domain is only a wasteland, so far as they can see. Inside, however, is a lush environment, cultivated with much unceasing labor. Vast sandstorms occasionally erupt. Their food resources are limited to what they can grow. The old clothes and tools and dishes of the kitchen and garden sheds must suffice.

And who are these inhabitants? Two very elderly sisters. Lily is the younger, quirky and foolish. Evelyn is no-nonsense and a taskmaster. Together they follow the tenets of an Almanac, written long ago by their deceased mother, who survived briefly into the new age. Their lost father is disdained, having deserted the family when times went pear-shaped.

Obviously, much of the dynamics of the tale are going to consist of sibling relationships. Newman beautifully limns the personalities of the women, and how they interact. They each have their individual dynamics, but also function often as a kind of gestalt construction, each one providing something the other one lacks. Lily, with her fripperies and impracticalities softens the harsh edges of Evelyn’s sternness, while that same sternness brings Lily back to reality when needed.

The opening chapters get us into the daily groove of life in the Garden. The narrative offers teasing memories—some of them unreliable—of how the world fell apart, and of the gals’ old life in a stable civilization and domestic space.

Then, just as we begin to wonder if Newman can possibly have any more plot left in his constrained situation, he introduces a variable: the arrival of a young boy from the wastelands.

At first both sisters want to kill him as a contaminated intruder. But little by little, sensing his humanity and utility, they come around to tolerating his presence. The boy — never named, but dubbed “Beast of Burden” — is portrayed in a naturalistic way neither heroic nor villainous. He is no Steerpike, looking to subvert, but simply an ensouled creature reduced to concerns of sheer survival. He opens out emotionally after a time, with security at hand, and in the end exhibits some truly heroic behavior.

The new regimen settles down, not quite as stable and reassuring as of old. Then comes the largest sandstorm in history—and this pocket civilization collapses all over again, in startling ways. A coda provides just the kind of closure we need.

Plainly, Newman has several predecessors and/or models in mind for this book, and he does them justice. Ian McEwan’s The Cement Garden comes to mind, as does Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle. With its overtones of a Robinsonade — stranded survivors eking out a living on an “island” — the book casts Beast of Burden as its Friday. Its Gothic, Gormenghast elements mesh nicely with the Post-Collapse furniture. But Newman’s ur-inspiration might very well have been non-fictional: the famous documentary by Albert and David Maysles, Grey Gardens, about the Beale mother and daughter living in their decaying property.

What ensures the reader’s attention and interest, almost more so than the plot, is Newman’s wonderful prose, which blends tactility with emotions and memories.

The frame of the French windows was completely broken, and Evelyn found smears and handprints on the dirty tiles within. The boy had been here. Squirming through the hole like it was a cat flap. Through the gap she saw the dim shapes of things. A carpet of dead flies that shifted in the draft. The bleached legs of a wicker chair. A wineglass. Evelyn’s heart hurt. She shut her eyes and looked away.

The smell came to her, the same one she had noticed when the boy had returned that dawn. Dust and rot and beneath it something spiced, barely there at all. Tobacco, was it? She had forgotten her father had smoked. It got into everything. Evelyn put a hand over her nose and mouth. The scent made her sick and drew her in at the same time. It made her want to crawl on her belly like a worm, into the rank and comforting darkness of the sunroom and then on into the rest of the house, the sitting room, the drawing room, and what came next, the playroom? No, no, no, it did not exist; none of those rooms had ever existed.

Most Post-Collapse stories focus on adventures traversing the blasted landscape. Newman has chosen to chronicle interior lives in a constrained setting. But it’s as compelling as any Mad Max outing.

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