Gary Wolfe

Lots of readers who have been keenly participating a first novel from Award winner M. Rickert World Fantasy might at the first speculate why that one time enigmatic ‘‘M.’’ has been restored by full name of Mary Rickert on the cover of The Memory Garden, with some attractive flowers. Is this a suggestion that famously dark vision of Rickert has been adapted in the service of the work of novel-length? Or is it just that the novel arrives to us from Landmark Sourcebooks, a publisher that has declared that it desires to target reader women generally and clubs book in particular? There are certainly ghosts in The Memory Garden, even though they are mainly intimidating, and even as some very dark secrets come out that are as worrying as any of tales of Rickert of familial life gone awry, the major vector of the novel comes out to be the only of astonishing affirmation. It can be that like has forever been major theme of Rickert, and even as it occasionally goes off the rails in definitely creepy method in their short invention, it is never cynically treated, and it is never without actual power. That strength is what at last drives The Memory Garden, mainly in respect to the association between Nan, the 79-year-old and Bay their adoptive 15-year-old daughter, who was away on doorstop of Nan in the shoebox. As is general in Rickert, both are stranger in their small society, with Nan supposed to be a witch and Bay having been natural with the caul, that, as per to Nan, is imaginary to mean certain occult powers.

The middle icon of the novel, and fraction of the reason Nan is supposed of witchery, is their lush backyard in which different type of flowers are planted in surplus shoes, and that looks immune to the deer and some other wildlife which disrupt some other gardens in the area.