Synopsis
‘Like an old wives’ tale, like a piece of wisdom passed down through generations which no one questioned or even thought about too hard. Like folklore. It was just something everyone knew, a rule to be followed. Don’t go to Almanby.’
Heather, Rachel and Antonia are going to Almanby. Heather needs to find her boyfriend who, like so many, went and never came back. Rachel has a mysterious package to deliver, and her life depends on it. And Antonia – poor, lovestruck Antonia just wants the chance to spend the day with Heather.
So off they set through the idyllic yet perilous English countryside, in which nature thrives in abundance and summer lasts forever. And as they travel through ever-shifting geography and encounter strange voices in the fizz of shortwave radio, the harder it becomes to tell friend from foe.
Creepy, dreamlike, unsettling and unforgettable – you are about to join the privileged few who come to understand exactly why we don’t go to Almanby.
Review
Sometimes you have to sit with a book for a while to really formulate your thoughts. In the case of Lost In The Garden by Adam S. Leslie, it’s been about 2 months since I read this. Lost In The Garden is an ethereal, dreamlike “post-apocalyptic” (and I use that term loosely) novel following a group of three women as they travel together from their countryside village to another village called Almanby, all for their own different reasons. There is just one thing: everyone and everything says that you should never go to Almanby.
This is a pure vibes book, and sometimes the strength of one aspect – namely, Leslie’s ability to craft an uncanny valley atmosphere of a perpetual hazy English countryside summer – is enough to carry me through a novel’s duration. And whilst that makes it sound like that is the only part of the book I liked (it’s not), it is certainly my most favourite. The prose reads with this flair for its own cinematography, being well aware of its hyper-bright, floral, lush tone. It reads like someone tried to transpose the visual feeling of watching Midsommar and mostly succeeded. I get this sense that reality itself is melting, the geography of this never-ending English countryside and its small-village fixation warping to create something familiar but alien and unsettling. Then you throw in roaming packs of violent ghost-zombies, disturbed radio transmissions, and the slippage of memory that goes with being outside on a hot summer’s day, and you have a setting that feels constantly dangerous.
My issue however lands with the characters. In short, I liked following them and was eager to see where they go, but they felt wildly inconsistent throughout. Heather in particular – arguably our main character – never felt the same between chapters. She seemed a bit childlike at first, as this unreality spills over the landscape, but then very quickly seems put together. And then she isn’t. And then she’s aloof and unserious to the point of irritation. And then she’s depressive and quiet. And then she’s dancing in fields whilst ghost-zombies descend upon her. In truth, I never really understood either of our three main characters arcs, but the most compelling of the lot was Antonia, only because I felt closest to her character. This book also lost its momentum in the final act, and became, for me, just a bit too dreamlike and unreal.
Criticisms aside, I did enjoy my time with Lost In The Garden, and it’s exactly the type of story that is ripe for an A24 adaption. If that was to happen, I’d be first in line for tickets. I think Adam S. Leslie crafts a narrative that is imaginative and visually stunning, to the point where I can feel the hot breeze on my skin and I can see the pollen in the late evening air. And that alone is reason enough why this is worth a read.
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