BOOK REVIEWS--FICTION
Gardens in the Dunes
by Leslie Marmon Silko
©1999 Simon and
Schuster.
I was excited about reading this book. I totally dig Silko: I consider her
an ass-kickin' womanist. Her poetry rocks and her last book Almanac of
the Dead (1992) unapologetically explored a world of both equivocal and
pure evil. That said, Gardens in the Dunes is a wimpy book with
fleshless characters that I wouldn't recommend to anyone.
The only reason I finished the book is that it was the first book club
selection for chicklit.com and I wanted to talk about it with other
folks.
What this book could have been: a turn of the century story about a Native
American girl named Indigo from the southwest (Sand Lizard people) who
subsistence gardened until she was rounded up and sent to boarding school.
Circumstances lead Indigo to be foster-parented by Hattie, a suffragist with
a razor-sharp mind, and her well-to-do husband, Edward, who is a botanist
and orchid-hunter. The couple takes our heroine to gardens throughout the
U.S. and England. The little girl collects seeds from various people's
gardens; the white-people gardeners are just thrilled by her interest. Then,
reclaimed by her sister, Indigo lives in poverty until she discovers the
power of the plants she planted--for their beauty—to feed her and her
sister.
Sounds good doesn't it?
However, the story is actually more about Hattie. Even though she is
supposed to be an academic and a smart lady, she can't seem to follow a
single thought to its logical conclusion. She is plagued by bad luck: Edward
abandons her, she is raped (in what might have been intended as a climactic
scene), but it's just senseless. It seems like Silko leaves her story about
Indigo in order to explore Victorian ideas of women's intellect and
sexuality. This exploration is pretty half-assed, and our Native American
heroine's story does not deserve to be so neglected. The pointless violence
left a really bad taste in my mouth. There were interesting historical
sidebars about a Living Messiah movement among the Native Americans and the
phenomenon of orchid hunting in the tropics, but they weren't enough to make
the book worth reading. I'm hoping for something better from Silko next time
around. -EF
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