The Wonder Garden
Lauren Acampora, 2015
Grove / Atlantic
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780802124814
Summary
John likes to arrive first. He enjoys standing quietly with a house before his clients arrive, and today, although he feels pinned beneath an invisible weight, he resolves to savor this solitary moment.
It’s one of those overhauled ranches so common to Old Cranbury these days, swollen and dressed to resemble a colonial. White, of course, with ornamental shutters and latches pretending to hold them open. A close echo of its renovated sisters on Whistle Hill Road, garnished with hostas and glitzed with azaleas. He has seen too many of these to count . . .
- A man strikes an under-the-table deal with a surgeon to spend a few quiet seconds closer to his wife than he’s ever been;
- a young soon-to-be mother looks on in paralyzing astonishment as her husband walks away from a twenty-year career in advertising at the urging of his spirit animal;
- an elderly artist risks more than he knows when he’s commissioned by his newly arrived neighbors to produce the work of a lifetime.
In her stunning debut The Wonder Garden, Lauren Acampora gathers with enchanting realism the myriad lives of a suburban town and lays them bare.
These intricately interwoven stories take a trenchant look at the flawed people of Old Cranbury, the supposedly ordinary lives they lead, and the secrets they try so desperately to hide. Acampora’s characters are neighbors, lovers, friends, who, beneath their dreamy suburban surface, are nothing like they appear.
These incisive tales reveal at each turn the unseen battles we play out behind drawn blinds, the creeping truths from which we distract ourselves, and the massive dreams we haul quietly with us and hold close.
Deliciously creepy and masterfully choreographed, The Wonder Garden heralds the arrival of a phenomenal new talent in American fiction. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1975-76
• Raised—suburban Connecticut, USA
• Education—B.A., Brown University; M.F.A., Brooklyn College
• Currently—lives in Westchester County, New York
Raised in Connecticut, Lauren Acampora graduated from Brown University. After college she headed to New York City where she worked at The Copoer Union and eventually as an editorial assistant at Little, Brown and Company publishers. She went on to earn her Masters in Fiction Writing in 2004 from the City University of New York, Brooklyn College.
Her debut collection of linked stories, The Wonder Garden, was published in 2015 and named "Spotlight of the Month," as well as an "Indie Next" selection.
Acampora's short fiction has also appeared in publications such as the Paris Review, Missouri Review, Prairie Schooner, New England Review, Antioch Review, and Day One.
Acampora and her husband, artist Thomas Doyle, moved to the New York suburbs of Westchester County with their young daughter. (Adapted from the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Like Wharton, Acampora seems to understand fiction as a kind of elegant design. As characters reappear in one story after another, Acampora reveals herself as a careful architect...accomplishes great depth of characterization, in no small part because Acampora doesn’t shy from the unpalatable.... There is a barbed honesty to the stories that brushes up against Acampora’s lovely prose to interesting effect. Often a single sentence twists sinuously, charged with positive and negative electricity.
Alix Ohlin - New York Times Book Review
Acampora is a brilliant anthropologist of the suburbs.... [The Wonder Garden] is reminiscent of John Cheever in its anatomizing of suburban ennui and of Ann Beattie in its bemused dissection of a colorful cast of eccentrics. But Acampora’s is entirely her own book.... Acampora’s ability to lay bare the heartaches of complex individuals within an utterly unique imaginative world is worthy of high praise.
Boston Globe
Acampora’s stories show that an Anna Karenina principle still applies: All happy families are the same; the unhappy ones are miserable in their own special way. Or to boil it down to modern terms: mo’ money, mo’ problems.... Add well-drawn characters, interesting plots, cultural zingers and dead-on critiques of consumerism and Acampora delivers a page-turner.
Dallas Morning News
In 13 sharply drawn linked stories, Acampora reveals the complexities beneath the polish and privilege of a prosperous Connecticut town.
People
A smashing debut, with range, subtlety and bite. Reading Acampora, we’re in Cheever country, with hints of Flannery O’Connor.
Jane Ciabattari - BBC.com
(Starred review.) Acampora’s debut creates a portrait of a fictional upscale New York suburb, Old Cranbury, through a series of linked stories that are intelligent, unnerving, and very often strange…In each story, Acampora examines the tensions, longings, and mild lunacies.... [Wonder Garden] rendered in crisp prose and drawing on extensive architectural detail—is as irresistible as it is disturbing.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) The stories in Acampora’s first collection are so vivid, tightly plotted, and expertly woven that they make you look forward to reading more by this accomplished author.
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Acampora wields prose with the precision of a scalpel, insightfully dissecting people’s desperate emotions and most cherished hopes.... Acampora not only meticulously conveys the allure of an outwardly paradisiacal suburban community...she also clearly captures the inner turmoil of its residents...the heartaches and delusions of American suburbanites.
Booklist
(Starred review.) Spooky and fabulous... A cleareyed lens into the strange, human wants of upper-class suburbia.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also, consider these LitLovers talking points to help you start a discussion for The Wonder Garden:
1. Talk about the various stories and characters: which ones do you relate to more than others? Do you find some (characters and stories) more likable and engaging or more off-putting than others?
2. What do these stories suggest about seemingly normal individuals who populate the suburbs? Do most of us harbor secrets or hidden pasts that seem unshakable? Are we all as flawed as Acampora's characters? Or are these peoples' disillusionment and inner struggles more deeply rooted than our own? Did you at some point wonder why these well-to-do people can't be happy? Why can't they?
3. Do you find any of these stories ironic? What about the irony, for instance, with John, whose work as a house inspector depends on his strict attention to detail? How does that professional skill translate to his personal life?
4. In what way does Acampora build a sense of community in Old Cranberry? Are you able to remember the characters who appear and reappear in the different stories? Is Old Cranberry a place you would like to live?
5. What is the author's take on American culture—consumerism, for instance?
6. If you're a devotee of the TV series Mad Men, or of John Cheever's stories, do you see any parallels to Acampora's stories?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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