Gillian Murray Kendall’s The Garden of Darkness blooms with
subtlety. This post-apocalyptic young adult novel is like a little plot of
land: you till in early Spring, plant your seeds and sit back to watch it grow.
In an age where these end of the world
novels are shooting up like weeds, Garden blossoms and crowds out the others,
soaking up the glory of the sun for itself. Sure you’ve got to water and weed
it, but in the end, you’ve quite the bumper crop.
As an overburdened field suffers from loss of nutrients, we
get your obligatory plague decimation—but there’s a twist: the Cure. Of course,
if you happen to weather the plague and get said Cure, you’ve become a
stark-raving lunatic, much creepier than being a zombie. If you’re a kid and
haven’t yet succumbed to the plague, you now have to overcome the Cured and the
day-to-day survival of a fallen world.
There’s a certain honesty here in the way different children
handle their new-found lifestyles. It’s not just about missing their folks, it’s
about how they deal. Our heroes are at times child-like, but not childish. The
fact that survivors mentioned child services more than once was interesting, as
were the way suicide and death in general. Much love to a character’s lethargy
in response to basic hygiene. Too neat.
And although the main character wore her crush’s letterman
jacket for the entirety of the novel, it acted as a tether to the former world,
but not in a gooey, overly sentimental way. There is the slightest hint of love
story taking place here, too, but it is deftly handled as mild flirtation. Without the pressures of societal norms and
high school drama, it allows itself to develop naturally.
Character development is spot-on as more and more hangers-on
are introduced into bands. They balance well, unlike typical adventure novels
where particular characters have special skill sets. Here, they just are: kids
will be kids. Even the behemoth of a dog, Bear, our main character befriends
early in the story, isn’t used as an easy way out of harmful situations.
Two of the more stellar plot points to note:
Not giving anything away, but there’s a grown man who deems
himself “master-of-the-situation” whom is gathering children to his aid. As the
book progresses, his intentions become clearer and it is compelling to see his
chapters interspersed amid the novel as a parallel to our roving band of
children and teens.
There’s also an aside about halfway through highlighting
characters which we’ll never get a chance to interact with. As a brief
interlude it was captivating to read of their ill-fated exploits in comparison
to our main characters.
The ending sneaks up on you, and it’s worrisome that loose
ends won’t be tied up. It was, however, clear, concise and a quite sharp way of
ending things. It is beautifully wrought, and won’t be tied up in another
series where you get a book and movie deal.
And so we return to the garden aspect of this book. Its
shooting tendrils sprout up time and again about the pages literally and
figuratively looking for a way to grow amid the darkness. There is some good
fruit here, and it should be eaten of heartily.
