The Garden Angel

by Mindy Friddle

Set in a Southern, city-swallowed town, The Garden Angel tells the story of two women and their unlikey friendship. Cutter Johanson is plucky and eccentric, nostalgic about her family's once glorious past. She has her hands full warding off potential buyers from the dilapidated homestead she is determined to keep. Though the neighborhood has changed, even grown shabby, Father Bob's Home for Retarded Men across the street has become a sort of extended family for Cutter. And her two jobs keep her busy: she has the "dead beat" writing obituaries for the Sans Souci Citizen and waits tables at the nearby Pancake Palace. Cutter's home is like another character, elegiac, full of secrets, providing her with a refuge from the modern world outside her neighborhood. That is, until Cutter's sister, Ginnie, pregnant with her married lover's child, brings trouble home.

Elizabeth Byers rarely ventures outside the brick ranch she shares with her husband, Daniel, a professor at Palmetto University. Agoraphobic and stricken with panic attacks, she fills her days gardening and writing her dissertation on Emily Dickinson. But one day, an anonymous call brings disturbing news that propels her into action. Elizabeth summons her courage to leave her house and drive into neighboring San Souci, and the disturbing sad events that follow lead her to forge a friendship with Cutter, a stranger who reaches out to help.

By the closing pages, Cutter is losing her house and Elizabeth is losing her husband. The two women pull together to come up with a solution--and find sanctuary from their troubles.

Genres: Fiction, Southern, Chick Lit, Book Club, Contemporary, Womens Fiction, Womens

290 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Her Best Self is Mindy Friddle's third novel. Her previous novel, Secret Keepers, won the Willie Morris Award for Southern Fiction. Mindy's first novel, The Garden Angel, was a SIBA bestseller and selected for Barnes & Noble’s Discover Great New Writers. The South Carolina Arts Commission awarded Mindy a prose fellowship, and she has twice won the state’s Fiction Prize. Her stories and essays have appeared in numerous journals. She's a nature lover, beach comber, and volunteer fire fighter. She holds an MFA from Warren Wilson and lives on Edisto Island, South Carolina.

Reviews

[Jenny (Reading Envy) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I decided to read this book because the author graduated from the university where I am a librarian, and she's back this semester teaching a journalism class. The book is described as being similar to Alice Hoffman, and it is in the sense that the story is about women without a big support network going through hard times, but without the magical elements that I was hoping for (to truly be like Hoffman.)

The story takes place literal miles from where I live, in Sans Souci, an old mill town that is crumbling. One of the main characters is having to sell her (grandmother's) home after her death, leading to the core story of the novel. Characters go to "Palmetto University" which I imagine is the fictional version of my university, live in Palmetto, the newspaper is threatened by the larger Palmetto newspaper, and they shop at Lo-Bi (we have Bi-Lo. At one point they go to a farmstand in Travelers Rest, a town just north of me. So I did enjoy the fictionalized reality that surrounds me every day.

It is written well enough, although the garden angel is not an important element and seems to be selected to be catchy (and actually doesn't get mentioned until page 200!). I found the characters a bit generic but the emotion to be very realistic, from Elizabeth who is clearly struggling with grief and mental distress and Cutter who is trying to juggle jobs and keep her life afloat.

[Kathy H · Rating 5 out of 5]

I truly enjoyed this book. Friddle is an excellent character-builder; her quirky book-people and their everyday weird life situations touch the kindness, humour, oddness, determination, weaknesses in all of us. It is a love story of sorts; of finding one's heart's desire, be that another person to love, a home, a sense of community and a place therein.

[Katherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. The characters were well constructed, and I particularly liked Elizabeth, who suffers from intense anxiety. After moving along at a comfortable pace, the book did seem to run quickly through the ending, but was saved by the epilogue. I would read this book again.

[Mary Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this book. I'm a sucker for a well thought-out book that delves into complex, unusual relationships in a unique writing style. I want to read it again already!

[Teresa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book explores the limitations set on people by fear. Irrational fear based on the acceptance of one's inadequacies and failures. The character Elizabeth suffers from an anxiety disorder that doesn't allow her a simple trip to the grocery store. She has trouble forcing herself out of the house into her yard let alone into the work place. She cannot get the concentration and motivation to finish her dissertation. While I don't suffer from a mental condition, but rather a physical one, I felt like this story could be written about me. I love the determination that made her face her fears, and while her condition didn't cease to exist, she overcame it.

[Rhonda · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Garden Angel is a gem! Mindy Friddle’s sharp and detailed description of setting and character combined with the perfectly executed pacing of this complicated and layered story is a must read. What a treat to be a witness oto this emotional and touching journey of Cutter Johanson and Elizabeth Byers, two very different but equally lovely women.

[Gail · Rating 3 out of 5]

I usually have a hard time identifying with contemporary "realistic fiction" but these characters I felt I knew from my college days. I could even find the plot of this book to be believable. The pregnancy of one woman brings together two very unlikely friends who help each other solve real estate and infidelity problems.

[Denise Ellis · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Garden Angel touched me not only by the characters in the book but how my life has been similar to all the emotions I found between its []pages. A humorous look at how we handle the things life throws at us and even though we feel beaten we find a strength in us that we were not aware existed.

[Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very quirky but I liked it.

[Bryan Friddle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully written.

[Lori · Rating 2 out of 5]

Cutter, a can-do southern orphan in her 20's, works two jobs (flipping pancakes and writing obits) in her slowly dying southern small town to try to earn the money to save her grandma's run-down old mansion before her greedy selfish troubled siblings sell it out from under her. Cutter inadvertently makes friends with the wife of the professor with whom her sister is having an affair. The wife is brilliant but fragile, trapped at home by extreme phobias and fears ala Emily Dickinson. Wife and Cutter manage to help each other out and bring the novel to a nice-n-tidy happy ending.

Cutter is a funny, silly, classic escapist chick-lit-heroine. Picaresque southern setting and supporting characters, right down to the waitress friend with the beehive hairdo, lacquered nails, perpetual cigarette and boozy husband. Easy summer read, but nothin' new or thought provoking.

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is what I've found for SC themed book for book club. :) It was cute. A quick fluffy chick lit read, and I probably don't space myself with enough of those. Cutter is the main character, deeply attached to the old family home. Her brother and sister want to sell. Meanwhile Cutter has somehow become friends with the agoraphobic wife of her sister's illicit lover, and...... well, it's an odd but interesting story. Not bad for a first book.

[Meredith · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. Its characters are realistic (though Cutter’s dream of keeping her family home seems hopeless), there are many funny parts (picture the monkey throwing his poop into the hated realtor’s beehive hairdo), it shows sympathy (the philandering husband’s kindness to his emotionally troubled wife), and ultimately is uplifting and deep (you must live the life you want, not the life someone else wants you to live, no matter how loving they are).

[Sue · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book quite a bit and was surprised. I don’t need true to life scenarios or perfect love stories dripping with romance but I do need characters that seem real and for me, that was the case. Elizabeth was my favorite character and that was because she had the ability to lift above her neurosis and to find joy in everyday things. This is a keeper and one I may well read again.

[Phyllis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderful first book by SC upstate author Mindy Friddle. Terrific story, with finely drawn characters. Greenville natives will recognize many of the neighborhoods and places.

[Paige · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars. This was billed as "humorous fiction." It tried to be funny but it really was more sad. Characters were pretty one dimensional and their relationships were tragic and the wrap up wasn't realistic whatsoever.

Garden City Public Library's "extreme book nerd 2020" category: a book with garden in the title.

[Pat · Rating 4 out of 5]

This audio book took me 2 weeks. I struggled on the first third. It became better and actually, by the end, I was enjoying the story. Not because the book was finished, but because it actually told a tale worth listening to.

[Gail · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was written well enough, the story was interesting, but nothing particularly original. Found myself skimming through. Tied up a bit too neatly in a bow at the conclustion. I find I'm not a chick lit kind of woman.

[Louise · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novel about eccentric characters in a small Southern town is comic, but also has more serious themes, such as mental illness, that the author treats with a light touch. The story is engaging, the writing very good, and I liked the element of friendships between disparate types of people.

[Kori · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is both sweet and sad. The garden angel didn't play as much of a role in the story, it was more about a family home.

[Cindy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting take on an extra marital affair.

[Susan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Crazy is one thing, but these neurotic women were too much for me.

[MJ Cahill · Rating 4 out of 5]

pretty good read

[Dawn]

Ooo

[Twobbema · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved this story.

[Carol · Rating 4 out of 5]

Delightful story and an easy read!

[Rachel Silver · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was okay, not the best or most gripping book ive ever read but decent enough to intrigue me to finish. A good library type read.

[Chris Daily · Rating 2 out of 5]

What an impressive collection of metaphors and similes one could make from just this one book. They tended to overwhelm the story.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a perfect follow up to the Land that Moves, Land that Stands Still. Not that they are related or have anything to do with one another, but this was a light yet engaging read. Based in a small town in South Carolina, the main character Cutter works at a pancake joint and writes obits for the town newspaper. Her Gran who raised her, along with her brother and sister has recently died. All Cutter wants to do is keep her family house, but the siblings want to sell. Cutter tries at every turn to sabotage the real estate agent's showing of the house, meanwhile her sister's pregnant with a married man's baby. Cutter has this way about her that is very comfortable, she gets along with most everyone and lends a hand when needed. So it's not so odd that when the wife of her sisters lover is found in front of her house about to faint (she caught wind of the affair) she invites her in. Elizabeth is fragile, is an academic (like her husband) though she has not completed her thesis and has developed quite a state of anxiety and nervousness that leaves her unable to venture out. Cutter ends up befriending Elizabeth, and taking her out into the world and thus the drama intensifies and the interrelations become all the more entagled. Loved the story and the characters.

[Jeana · Rating 2 out of 5]

The only reason I gave this three stars (instead of 2) is because I liked the ending, and the idea of turning the dilapidated house Cutter lives in into a B&B. I found the characters trite, the storyline overdone, and really the only positive things I can say about this book are: 1) that it is a fast read and 2) I liked the Emily Dickinson poetry spread through it. This is really an unremarkable book, and I doubt I would read anything by the author in the future.

And by the way, why did poor Elizabeth have to live in the tiny little maids quarters in back when it was really her money that helped Cutter keep the house?