Book review: The Gardens by Emma Babbington

The Gardens by Emma Babbington is a suspenseful read. There’s no sinister undertone so it’s not a thriller as such but a mystery to be picked apart which Babbington does artfully though a cold case police investigation and Jess, a middle aged woman trying to find out what happened to her 18 year old half-sister Nina who went missing over 30 years earlier. The discovery of bones in the garden of the pair’s childhood home at Willow Gardens makes Jess think they’ve finally learned Nina’s fate, or if they’re not Nina’s, that they’re somehow linked to her disappearance.

About this book

When human bones are found in the garden attached to the glamorous London home where she grew up, Jess McIntyre prepares to receive the news she has dreaded for thirty-four years that her sister, Nina, is dead and now here is the proof.

Nina disappeared without a trace in 1992, aged eighteen, the summer she fell in with a charismatic group of friends who squatted in a vacant house on the other side of Willow Gardens.

Having moved to Australia years ago, widow and single mum Jess arrives back in London to provide a DNA sample to help the investigation, with her teenage son, Ollie, in tow.

As they try and unravel the secrets of Nina's past, will they discover that some bodies are best left buried…?

My thoughts

This opens in Australia with a call advising Jess of the discovery of the bones. We learn that Jess moved to Australia with her Australian-born husband years before. Sadly he passed before he got to know his now 15 year old son Ollie. Jess’s parents were seemingly wealthy. Her father was an author (also father to Nina) and mother worked in a literary agency. Jess moved her distraught mother to Australia after her father’s death but left their house (her childhood house) empty, not ready to pack up so many family memories.

The possibility she might finally find out what happened to her half-sister drags Jess and Ollie to England and the house she grew up in. I’m not a visual person and I must confess this is one occasion on which I wouldn’t have minded a map or floorplan because I couldn’t get my head around the fact that several people (or at least two) seemed to have housing on the same property and a garden which may or may not have been shared, but certainly was maintained by Jess’s mother. I couldn’t work out if they were semi-detached with a shared yard, housing built around a garden or courtyard, or similar to flats on top of each other.

That aside, I found it fascinating that squatting was once legal (or not illegal) in England. Here Jess is reminded that a group of young adults (previously members of a commune, Chiseldown) camped out at a house near Willow Gardens and befriended Nina prior to her disappearance.

We have a couple of storytellers. There’s Jess obviously and she shares some of her sister’s history and her own memories of the time. We also spend time with a resident at Chiseldown, one who’s often ostracised and punished by its leader. I don’t know what it says about me but I kept assuming it was female and each time I was reminded our narrator was male I was surprised. Babbington very cleverly though keeps their identify from us, so we’re left guessing.

Although Chiseldown still exists as an ‘intentional retreat’ it’s gone mainstream and the enigmatic but somewhat seemingly unhinged leader (Mary) long gone. Jess (& Ollie) find themselves herself looking into the group and their history after learning of their connection to Nina, with the squatters given the task of recruiting others and later expanding their work in Spain.

Many characters we meet here come in shades of grey. There’s a neighbour who rankles Jess and used to have the same effect on her parents. And in the past, the squatters experience some interesting power dynamics and more so prior to that while at Chiseldown, where an obvious hierarchy exists and some will do anything to reach the pinnacle of that pecking order.

This is set in 1992 and I quite enjoyed dipping into the past. I also pondered the ease with which the squatters transitioned from the cloistered commune to 1990s London and suspect it was easier then than it would be now.

I unfortunately didn’t receive this from the publisher for review, but I’m helping prep author questions for ABC Wide Bay radio, so borrowed the announcer’s copy.
UPDATE: I DID receive a copy from the publishers, HQ Fiction and am grateful for that.