I read this because it's so lovingly regarded in The Shell Seekers. The beginning is charming and plotless. The middle is full of men subjecting the main character Elizabeth to long sexist diatribes. I especially enjoyed the segments about her best friend and how they celebrate each other's birthdays.

This extraordinarily tedious book does not have any plot or amusing incident, substituting instead lists of flowering varietals interspersed with snobbery. When the narrator is not telling us about the kinds of roses in her flower-beds (Marie van Houette, Viscountess Folkestone, Laurette Messimy, Souvenir de la Malmaison, Adam and Devoniensis, Persian Yellow, Bicolor, Duke of Teck, Cheshunt Scarlet, Prefet de Limburg…it goes on for pages), she is offering up such pearls of wisdom as ‘why cook when you can get some one to cook for you?’, or ‘Servants are only big children’.

Or, again, relating the misogyny of her husband (‘only strong-minded women wish to see you the equals of men, and the strong-minded are invariably plain’) as an amusing and vaguely endearing foible. Elizabeth is dismissive of her children, rude to her houseguests, and she fires the governess after overhearing her airing liberal views.

The overall effect of this is like Dowager Lady Grantham reading you a seed catalogue until you pass out from boredom.

This review is for the audio version narrated by Nadia May. I enjoyed this production, the narration was clear and made the read enjoyable.

I liked this little book a lot. Its in essence diary entries, but it reads more of a novel. I can relate with Elizabeth in many ways, and did like her character a lot. Her escape is her garden, which she describes in some detail, but the book also talks about her family and friends. It revolves generally about her life in this time period which is about a year I think. Her husband is a bit of a brute, she called him "the Man of Wrath". But the time period is the late 1800's and times were certainly different.

I like her writing style and find her witty and a bit satirical.

I've just learned it was recommended by one character to another in Downton Abbey which I'm most impressed with as I do love the series.

Did finish (Jan '18). Still think an avid gardener would enjoy it more than I did, at least in the very gardening descriptive portions, but the interspersed musings on family life and friends were pretty amusing. Author has a great sense of humor. I did have to roll my eyes a bit at how she just loved to be alone in the house for 40 days with no servants and family and how it was so nice to just eat salad and bread and be in the garden all the time. Well, she did have someone to make her that salad and that bread and bring it to her in the garden and I just wonder what she would have thought to, like most of us today, have NO servants and no time to wander in the garden while the minimal servants still did all the work ;)

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Will probably finish later. There's no story (it is a diary) and while it's charming (I especially love how she calls her daughters April baby, May baby, and June baby), it didn't hold my attention right now. Probably an avid gardener would love it more.

First published in 1898, this is an autobiographical tale of an English woman who marries a German count and moves to his rural estate. Having visited this area northern Germany myself, and seen the now crumbling and deserted mansions of the former upper class scattered throughout the verdant landscape, I could so easily picture Elizabeth there. Weary of city life in Berlin, she insisted that they move to the countryside where she felt at home among her beloved flowers. Later she and the count were divorced, and one can see this foreshadowed by the fact that she calls him "The Man of Wrath." Her children she refers to simply as the April baby, May baby, and June baby, and seems to regard them with affectionate tolerance. She has a wry sense of humour and doesn't hesitate to write scathingly about her stuffy German neighbours and her infrequent visitors. Elizabeth seems only truly happy in her garden, even sitting outside in winter wearing her fur coat and dreaming of spring. Her memoir is a rare glimpse into the existence of a wealthy woman making the best of a loveless marriage.

What a lovely, funny book! I had always heard of it and finally decided to pick it up. Elizabeth tells of her fascination, almost obsession, with her garden. She gives lots of interesting details about the flowers that she plants and the wildlife she observes. It is all very inviting!

Then she tells funny little stories about her children, the servants, her husband, and visitors who come to stay. All interrupt her time in the garden!

Overall, it is a relaxing, entertaining story. Elizabeth von Arnim does a very nice job with this one!

I hate to say it but I found this underwhelming. I enjoyed the first third and the last sixth (was never very good at math!), but the middle part was annoyingly and seemingly pointless. It's mostly Elizabeth complaining about the Man of Wrath or about houseguests and then her particular houseguest Minora, who has been foisted on her over Christmas by a friend. Elizabeth and her friend Irais are uncomfortably mean to and about Minora. I appreciate Elizabeth's snarkiness when it relates to her garden and to her own amateur attempts at gardening, but when it is turned to people it often feels mean-spirited.

There are many good paragraphs of writing in here that I loved, and I certainly symphathize with Elizabeth's desire to enjoy the solitude and peace of her garden in her own way. I have loved other von Arnim novels, so I will certainly keep reading, but I am sad that this one was less enjoyable than I anticipated.

3.5★

n  "Your husband ought to bring you to town in the winter."

"But I don't want to be brought to town."

"And not let you waste your best years buried."

"But I like being buried."n

This novella is at least partly autobiographical & a lot of it is about Elizabeth's passion for gardening.

I read it as a group read over at Women's Classic Literature & I knew it would be a hard sell for me because I don't share this passion, & quite frankly I hear enough about plants from my husband, who does. The endless planning & lists of plants just bored me, & was part of why it took me nine days to read this very short book.

Initially I didn't realise this was a satire, so the thoughtless cruelty to the baby owls horrified me. I so agreed with the Man of Wrath (as the husband was called) on that point.

& with a couple of exceptions, I generally don't like the diary format in novels. To be fair, this was quite a good example of it though.

I've ranked it even this high because von Armin writes beautifully.

But not the right book for me.

n

n

https://wordpress.com/view/carolshess...n

Another splendid and poetica novel by Elizabeth von Arnim.

Elizabeth’s garden helps her suffer fools. Sitting in her garden, be it summer or winter, she can then tolerate unwelcome guests, discourses in disciplining women, and the judgmental British tutor. Amidst Elizabeth’s immersion in the beauty of gardening, von Arnim writes a lovely scene of sleighing and skating on the local canals and out to the Baltic Sea.

This was my favorite thing I read this year. I wrote more about why here, at Book Riot: http://bookriot.com/2016/10/18/readin...

Utterly charming and witty, this appealed to me especially as I have just this summer relandscaped part of my garden, intending to create a rose garden - I anticipate making many of the same mistakes as Elizabeth but on a much smaller scale.
Recommended by JimZ on this site, for which many thanks to him and to goodreads - my reading life would be so much poorer without the friends I’ve made here.
One Elizabeth von Armin down, 15 to go .......