Title:  Red Gifts in the Garden of Stones

Author: P.A. Swanborough

Genre: Literary Fiction

 

Deep in South Wales, a rural community shuffles into the Ty Merched farmhouse to mark the one-hundredth birthday of matriarch, Lizzie Coombes. Lizzie has kept her distance from the villagers for decades. Likewise, they regard her, blunt daughter Myfanwy, unstable granddaughter Sarah-Maud, and feral great-granddaughter Jenner with equal contempt and mistrust.

When a string of events involving the Ty Merched women occur, rumors swell and tempers flare causing buried grievances, traumas, and suspicions to slowly surface inside and out of the ancient farmhouse…

Set against the backdrop of the 1969 moon landing, which affords contrast and context, Red Gifts in the Garden of Stones has a mystical, folkloric feel, certainly for its first three-quarters, even while exploring the cross-generational familial psychodrama unfolding in the farmhouse.

This shadowy, eldritch quality is enhanced by the Welsh landscape that Swanborough deftly captures in all its wild, preternatural beauty, perfectly complementing the whiff of rustic paganism still haunting its people.

Her prose is unashamedly writerly. Richly descriptive, literally and figuratively, the windingly lovely sentences resonate with poetic insight and measured pragmatism. Combined with her intriguing, otherworldly story, Red Gifts in the Garden of Stones is mesmerizingly good.

Although centenarian Lizzie appears to be the pivotal character, it’s the Ty Merched farmhouse that is the touchstone. Swanborough brings the antediluvian dwelling to life as a character in its own right, invoking a sensory experience of the aged place with its quirks and ancestral spirits, lending it a twisted fairytale vibe.

Swanborough is equally masterful at depicting the suffocating atmosphere between the occupants of Ty Merched. Lizzie and Myfanwy co-exist in a toxic dynamic that seethes with barely suppressed rage and resentment.

Lizzie is a conflicted character. Experienced yet vulnerable, nostalgic but not sentimental. She is capable of compassion yet only able to express affection in her internal conversations with dead husband, William.

Leaden in mind and body, Myfanwy has repressed her pain and longing to the extent that she appears emotionally redundant, and her sanity is anchored within the Ty Merched walls.

The younger inhabitants of Ty Merched are especially fascinating. Fragile Sarah-Maud is a wraith-like individual, her state of mental disintegration conveyed with a raw immediacy that packs an emotional punch.

Her gifted, untamed ten-year-old daughter, Jenner, a child of nature and healing, begins the novel as a pitiful figure, destined to be a victim of circumstance, even with the protection of loyal pup, Smalldog.

However, Jenner not only infuses the narrative with a sprinkling of magical realism but also becomes the catalyst for the profound emotional awakening that the women of Ty Merched experience.

The villagers also undergo Damascene moments, of varying degrees, due to Jenner and the ranting antics of the Vicar, Twdr Morgan, who, although pathetic, is dangerous. Similarly, Detective Superintendent Watcyns is well-observed. Swanborough gifts him the ability to repress nastiness while keeping it visible.

Notwithstanding a life-altering twist, the last few chapters of the novel are dusted with a wry sense of humor. The reveal from the “Misses P” was amusing in its anti-climax. It works, although the novel ends very differently in tone to its beginning.  Nonetheless, Swanborough still keeps the reader rooted in the esoteric with the mysterious guardian angel character, Blodeuwedd.

A couple of side-plots are left wanting and, although the conclusion for two of Ty Merched women is desperately poignant, Sarah-Maud’s evolution appears a little too neat.

Red Gifts in the Garden of Stones is a spellbinding novel full of dark enchantment and arcane fire. Swanborough’s beguilingly beautiful prose and uncanny imagination take the reader on a compelling journey through love, loss, and redemption.

 

 

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