Book Review: "The Garden Against Time" by Olivia Laing

I feel like I’m writing this on the ‘battery against time’ since my laptop is surely dying and I have no charger on my person. I spent the last day or so reading this and then, going back and reading some favourite passages that I had taken pictures of with my phone. Olivia Laing’s prose has always evoked in me a strange draw, as if I am being summoned towards it. I cannot tell whether it is a blessing or a curse but it sure does make reading a much more introspective activity. Sometimes, especially in restaurants or on trains, I have received odd looks because once I exit the book and re-enter the real world, there is a gaze of utter perplexity on my face that is met as if someone has encountered a dear caught in headlights. I have often thought about how awkward this may be for any person who happens to be looking at me during this time, but if it is a really good book then I have my reasons.

‘The Garden Against Time’ is one of those books where I think Olivia Lang has outdone herself (even though I felt the exact same way about ‘A Trip to Echo Spring’ - which I have to admit is still my favourite by her. I read it three times). Including everyone from William Morris to our beloved Derek Jarman, Olivia Laing constructs a world entirely made from the universe within our gardens. She goes through intense histories related to the gardens she occupies, the importance of gardens in history and our own times and even manages to give us fresh and unique perspectives on our own gardens. You might think this an odd read for someone like me, who does not like plants and is slightly afraid of touching them, but I can appreciate great prose and reason and that is exactly what Olivia Laing is giving us here.

I have a dream sometimes, not often. I dream that 1am in a house, and discover a door I didn't know was there. It opens into an unexpected garden, and for a weightless moment 1 find myself inhabiting, new territory, flush with potential. Maybe there are steps down to a pond, or a statue surrounded by fallen leaves. It is never tidy, always beguilingly overgrown, with the corresponding sense of hidden riches. What might grow here, what rare peonies, irises, roses will I find? I wake with the sense that a too-tight joint has loosened, and that everything runs fluent with new life.

- Olivia Laing, ‘The Garden Against Time’

The author opens the text by introducing to us a theme that will continue for the entirety of the book - the garden as a place of magical happenings. Whether this is based within folklore or whether it is based within how we harvest our own gardens, believing they create magic - Laing is sure of the magical qualities of the gardens we have, we own and we cultivate. As we move through the book, we get commentaries on the histories of the gardens she has cultivated, how at one point there was a form of communist revolution going on and her home and garden had something to do with it. It is a wonderful eye-opening story on to the world beyond ourselves and that there are histories before us, during us and after us waiting to be unearthed and replanted.

One of the parts I liked (apart from all the cool stuff about Derek Jarman and his books ‘Modern Nature’ and ‘Dancing Ledge’), was a part she wrote about one of my favourite books of all time. It is called ‘Brideshead Revisited’ and I think the author hits the nail on the head with her analysis.

Both Brideshead and its melancholy French equivalent, Les Grande Meaulnes, centre on gardens of dangerous enchantments, a taste of which can warp or blight a life, making everything else seem threadbare by comparison. This type of garden, though, tends to be more aristocratic than divine, a paradise of idleness and luxury, where the springs have turned into baroque fountains, and a masked Adam feasts on plovers' eggs and strawberries, washed down with champagne.

Olivia Laing, ‘The Garden Against Time’

When Laing talks about ‘Paradise’ she often goes back to its original meaning of ‘garden’ in Persian. It then evolved into ‘Paradiso’ in Latin and eventually became associated with everything Edenic. The Edenic descriptions of her prose, her analysis and her critiques are something to be studied. Honestly, they take your breath away when you realise that she is correct and humans are made to cultivate their gardens as part of their home, their health and their structure - rooting them in the ground in a way.

I could go on about this book and its greatness forever but I think in order to truly know it, you must read it. There are some incredible back stories which take us through time and place - reverting back to before communism was communism, taking us through the works and doomed precious life of our Derek Jarman and even looking the works of William Morris and what they meant. If you’re going to read any book about nature this year, make sure to yourself that it is this one.