Hedge

May 12, 2023

Delury (The Balcony) uses her protagonist to represent the frustrations that burden women whose desires are at odds with their roles as mothers. Filtered through the fierce love of a mother for her child, the book compassionately represents the messes people create and scramble to fix. Forty-year-old garden historian Maud wants a divorce; she separates from her husband by taking a garden restoration job in another state. Keeping the separation and her budding romance with a colleague from her two daughters creates a thorny situation when Maud's depressed and emotionally unstable teenager Ella learns of her mom's deception and acts out. The novel's pace, which starts leisurely, starts careening when a crisis with Ella turns Maud's life, and priorities, upside down. As Ella starts self-harming, the family attends counseling to confront this issue, and Maud desperately tries to restore her turbulent relationship with her daughter while her relationship with her husband turns ugly. VERDICT By the time Maud slowly starts to lay a groundwork for her new single life, readers who enjoy themes of women's lives and relationships will be fully invested in her journey.--Sonia Reppe

Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 1, 2023
The romance that arrives in the life of a woman moving on from her marriage turns out to be more of a problematic beginning than a happy ending. Maud, a 40-year-old garden historian in San Francisco, has had enough of her pretense of a marriage to Peter, which also denied her the opportunity to follow her career. Now, spending the summer working on the restoration of a formal Victorian garden in New York's Hudson Valley, and separated from her husband, she finds herself falling for Gabriel, an archaeologist who's attached to the same project. But Maud's two daughters have arrived to join her for two months and need her attention, especially sensitive, moody 13-year-old Ella, who seems jealous of Maud and is flirting with Gabriel. The tension among the group reaches a crisis point as Peter comes to visit and Ella disappears, leading to revelations that will require Maud to stay married and put her children's needs first. Back in San Francisco, trying to make things work with Peter and assist Ella on her long road to recovery, Maud finds a new, local restoration job involving the garden of Hispanic settlers and looks back with a critical eye on "the collateral damage of that heedless summer." Then she meets Alice Lincoln, a wealthy artist who might underwrite the current garden project, and they become friends, distracting Maud from her musings about Gabriel, sex, and a life free from compromise. But the association with Alice leads unexpectedly to further ruptures that will blow Maud's life open even more drastically. Delury's sharply drawn portrait of anguish, loneliness, fear, and desire is less innovative and more slender than her noted debut, The Balcony (2018). But dodging romantic predictability while acknowledging the heart's true priorities, it delivers an engaging new journey from ignorance to knowledge via a garden. A persuasive, quietly satisfying portrait of a woman's midlife crisis and the essential choices she makes.

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June 10, 2024

Delury's (The Balcony) sophomore novel delves into the challenges of navigating motherhood and marriage while making room for one's own needs. The story follows 40-year-old garden-historian Maud as she restores a 19th-century garden in the Hudson valley. Maud has hit midlife and is contemplating divorce. She hopes to spend an idyllic summer with her daughters, Ella and Louise, on this charming estate, but her plans quickly go off the rails. Maud's friendship with and deep affection for archaeologist Gabriel Crews offer a promising start to the season, but when Ella and Louise arrive, she is torn between her budding romance and her daughters. It is clear that all is not well with 13-year-old Ella, and Maud has some tough choices to make. Narrator Molly Parker Myers has a talent for infusing personality into characters' speech. She not only differentiates between each character but beautifully portrays their personalities and reactions to the events as they play out. Myers's skillful narration will have listeners falling in love with Maud, her daughters, and the other people who come into their lives. VERDICT Delury offers a sensitive portrayal of real family struggles, balanced with a side of history and gardening.--Laura Trombley

Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.