Das Paradies am Fluss

by Marcia Willett, Barbara Röhl (Translator)

Nach langer Zeit ist die Künstlerin Jess Penhalion in ihre südenglische Heimat Devon zurückkehrt, um einen Preis für eins ihrer Gemälde entgegenzunehmen. Sie kann nicht ahnen, dass während dieses Aufenthalts auch ein wohl behütetes Familiengeheimnis gelüftet werden wird: Das Geheimnis um einen Vorfall, der sich vor vielen Jahren in einem wunderschönen Garten am Fluss zugetragen hatte. Mit weit reichenden Folgen, nicht zuletzt für ihr eigenes Leben...

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary, British Literature, Audiobook, Chick Lit

337 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 25, 2012

About the author

Marcia Willett began her career as a novelist when she was fifty years old. Since that first novel Marcia has written twenty more under her own name as well as a number of short stories. She has also written four books under the pseudonym "Willa Marsh", and is published in more than sixteen countries.
Marcia Willett's early life was devoted to the ballet, but her dreams of becoming a ballerina ended when she grew out of the classical proportions required. She had always loved books, and a family crisis made her take up a new career as a novelist - a decision she had never regretted.

Reviews

[Lacey · Rating 1 out of 5]

*I won this book through goodreads' first reads.

There are two criticisms I've heard people give about books I've never understood before that, after reading The Sea Garden, make perfect sense to me. The first is that the characters don't have distinct voices when they're speaking. The second (which I've received myself in regard to my own writing) is that there are too many characters introduced too quickly and they're too hard to keep track of.

In part due to those two reasons, I have no idea what happened in this book. I've noticed that here on goodreads the positive reviews tend to be nothing more than book reports, summarizing what happens but not even mentioning why the "reviewer" found reading these happenings to be enjoyable. Negative reviews usually pinpoint the problems a reader had with the book, but somehow a true positive review is often hard to find.

It's bad enough that there's no telling who's speaking without dialogue tags, even with them its hard to be sure. Too many names to keep track of, and too many similar names to keep straight. There are Mike and Mark, neither of whom ever actually appear in the flesh but both of whom are apparently too important (and I think one of them is dead?) to leave out. And there's Al and Alistair, who might actually be the same person. And then there's Kate and Cass, and Cass and Jess, and Jess and Juliet, and do you see where I'm going with this? Three of them are contemporaries and the other one is the granddaughter of one of the others, but I really couldn't say which is who. There are NINETEEN characters introduced in the first ten pages alone (and no, that's not even half of them!), and for the most part they're only mentioned by name, with absolutely no explanation who they are, how they're connected to everyone else, or any indication of whether they're an important recurring character (spoiler alert: they all are . . . I think) or just someone who appears at the beginning to help introduce the important people.

So yeah. I can tell you a lot of names, but I have absolutely no idea who this book is about. But what's it about? I'm not sure about that either.

Everybody is married, although half of them have divorced, and the other half either probably should have, or managed to work things out because (I think) everyone has also had at least one affair. The goodreads synopsis says the story is about Jess uncovering old family secrets (although I could have sworn it was Juliet), and it's your classic soap opera plot of the wife having an affair and getting pregnant and trying to pretend the baby is the husband's and one person knows the secret and is convinced the baby is Johnnie's(?) but in the end it turns out the baby was actually Mark's(?) and the news kills the super old grandmother with joy because she wanted it to be her son's but then it wasn't but she died happy and suddenly Jess/Juliet/whoever it was has found a family she didn't know she had, and a huge one at that. (seriously, new characters are introduced almost all the way to the end.)

Honestly though, that story seemed more of the subplot to the story about one couple (Gemma and Oliver?) deciding whether or not get divorced or stay together after they both had affairs and moved to Canada where their daughter died in an accident. And everybody's in the navy and constantly talking about boats and sailing and the past.

Because did I mention half the book is told in flashbacks? But that there's no real way to tell you've started reading one until it mentions the girls in party dresses because everyone was so fancy in the fifties (forties?). And then when it comes back to the present you can't tell either because it's still the same characters talking about the same things like no time has passed at all. It's not until they mention a character being dead (who is alive in the flashbacks) that you realize you've come back to the present.

Anyway . . . yeah. As far as I can tell there are a couple of good plot ideas in here. But when you've got to focus so much on trying to keep track of who's who and what's what in each and every individual sentence, you kind of lose the overall picture.

[Eileen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this to be a pleasing, gentle story, somewhat reminiscent of Maeve Binchy and Rosamunde Pilcher. What a relief, as thrillers are everywhere and I’ve certainly read my share recently! This is my second novel by Marcia Willett, and, again one finds a recurring, poignant awareness of those loved ones who have gone before. The intertwining generations, the nostalgic glimpses of days gone by, and the author’s rich depiction of natural elements are all factors which weave the tale together successfully. From my Arizona summer perspective I particularly savored this description of a season ebbing, with emphasis on the water element : ‘The long spell of fine autumn weather changes: Atlantic fronts sweep in from the west, bruise- colored clouds piling and toppling into downpours of rain. Rivers run high and fast, burst their banks, and smash small ancient bridges………………… Then suddenly, all is quiet again. The storms race away to the east and a waning moon, cast about with a shawl of stars, rises in the clear night sky. The temperature drops, hoar frost whitens bare twigs and fallen leaves, and puddles creak and splinter underfoot as ice begins to form.’ Sorting the characters was initially a bit daunting, but they did become clear as the novel progressed. In the audio version the narrator was very effective.

[Maurynne Maxwell · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is full of relationships; it's a continuation of the saga that began years and years ago with the story of the Navy families, and I don't wonder that some people gave it up, because there's a lot of relevant back story in 5 or 6 other books and no mention of that at all in the cover copy. Huge backlist opportunity lost by the publisher. I promise you will care a lot more about the characters if you've been reading Willett for a while and know the back stories. So, in context, as part of that large story, this is a small gem. Go read her other books, then come back to this. It is a bit short, though. Sigh.

[Louise Crathorne · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this book even without the back story for the characters. I agree that it takes a while to get your head around the characters; I did have to write them down in the early stages, but once I'd got that straight I really loved the book

[Debbie Robson · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the Nineties my mum and I read all the Rosamunde Pilcher books. I love Cornwall and Devon and every now and then I’m drawn inexplicably back to that part of England. I can’t afford a ticket at the moment, so I let Marcia Willett take me there in her wonderful descriptions of the Tamar river.
But it wasn’t just the landscape the characters inhabit that I liked. It was the characters themselves. I really enjoyed reading about Kate and Cass. They are both strong women, best friends for forty odd years and now in their sixties (or nearly). There is a fascinating backstory as well involving the sea garden of the title.
The strength of the novel is how well the character are intertwined (young and old), how they react to the circumstances they all find themselves in and how smoothly Willett moves from each point of view to the next.
And this is the first time I have encountered love at first sight done in a believable way.
‘That was quick work,’ murmurs a voice from behind him, and Oliver swings around to see a fair-headed woman surveying him with amusement. ‘It wasn’t even much of a chat-up line, either. Does he always cut you out like that?’
Oliver is aware of a very odd sensation; as if everything - the world, time, sound - has briefly stopped and now jolts on again but in an entirely different way. Nothing will ever be quite the same again. He shrugs, pretending resignation.
‘Story of my life,’ he says. ‘Are you Sophie?’”
An enjoyable read and I’m looking forward to getting my hands on her very first novel. It is about Kate and Cass and published in 1995.

[Jill · Rating 2 out of 5]

If ever a book needed a cast of characters listing in the beginning then 'The Sea Garden' by Marcia Willett is it! It was incredibly confusing and took me ages to figure out who everyone was. A young girl, Jess, is awarded the David Porteous Botanical Painting Award and is invited by David's widow to stay with her in Devon. Here Jess meets a bewildering array of people who have been friends forever, plus their children, and their children. It transpires that these people knew Jess's grandparents. So the book flashes back to the heady 60s then to the present while the mystery of Jess and her grandparents slowly untangles. The story has an old-fashioned air about it in a rather Rosamunde Pilcher way, and as I couldn't relate to the quirkiness or nonsense of the characters all of whom are unhappily married, divorced, widowed, just hanging in there or determined not to be married, I felt a little apart from it all. The author's love for this part of the world is evident and there are some lovely descriptive passages. [Reading reviews after I had written this, I discovered that this is a continuation of Willett's other stories which involve these characters; one reviewer said you need to start at her first and then read them in order. None of this is mentioned in the blurb, so false publishing I say!!!]

[Janis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am on the second to last of Marcia Willett's books...just finished the Sea Garden and immediately began to read Postcards from the Past...It is the only way to tackle Willett's novels...start with the first one and simply plough through to the last....she repeats her characters in subsequent stories, but not necessarily in sequence, which unless you read them one after the other makes for incredible confusion...

You find yourself reading backwards to try to remember where you saw that character, and who was that girl, or was that the guy etc...her books are deceptively complicated, the plots twist and turn to the past and back again making you dizzy, but excited to see what happens next...they are not simple page turners...on the contrary her descriptive passages are lyrical and you get the feeling with each book that you would like to pick up and fly to the moors she describes so wonderfully...

I am sorry that there is only one more after this one and I have to wait for it till the end of the year...however the great thing is that the very complicated plots and numerous characters that might confuse the reader, mean that I can start all over again without feeling that I read the books before...

[Pattie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Marcia’s books are so comfortable and relaxing xx

[Mel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a well written and beautiful story about fate and how a small kindness can change someone's life for the better. It is very British (which is totally my cuppa) and I believe there are other earlier books about the older characters when they're young and first married, but this works as a stand-alone novel with very few concise references explaining situations from their past lives. I loved it.

Jess Penhaligon is an artist just out of university whose won a prestigious art award from a now deceased artist's foundation which is presented to her in London by his widow Kate Porteous. Both women have suffered losses, Kate, her husband David five years earlier and Jess her beloved father who was killed in action in Bosnia when she was a young teen. They have an instant connection and when Jess's last name brings up ghosts from Kate's past she invites the young woman to come to West Devon and stay at her cottage in Tavistock. The present collides with the past when Jess is introduced to people whom her grandparents were close to before they immigrated to Australia many many years ago. There is a little mystery about Jess's grandparents which is interesting as it unfolds. There is also problems in Kate's son Guy's marriage, his wife Gemma has taken their twin boys and left him in Canada and has shown up unexpectedly on her parent's doorstep in West Devon. The parents Cass and Tom aren't all that supportive and it's uncomfortable all around because they are best friends with Kate, their son-in-law's mother. It's a lovely journey to where Guy, Gemma and Jess' lives weave together and with the help of good people things are accomplished and lives are changed forever.
My favorite character is Gemma's brother Oliver who is gorgeous and that sort of man that is great to have around when stuff goes sideways and he never judges he just lends a hand. It's a good story and I always love a book where everyone gets what they deserve in the end.

[Katherine Coble · Rating 2 out of 5]

Why, oh writer, do you need to have a Mike and a Mark and a Jess and a Cass? Why do you need to throw some twenty similarly-named people (all with the same job of being in the British Navy) at the reader in the first ten pages? Why do you start a page in one time and place, only to shift to another time and place in the next paragraph? Of course, we have no clue until five paragraphs later that we are now back in time.

I suspect if I were in the mood for this type of storytelling it might have gone down better. The setting was great, the scenario was interesting (to a point--I don't care about thing one and thing two's impending divorce). But I'm just not up for a book that reads like a fever dream, where a sentence or gesture from one character propels the story into a time shift. Whosits will reach for a glass of wine and it will make FlippityFloo flash back to a long ago dance party. The reader of course gets no warning. Reader has to figure out from the context if we're in modern day or back in the early days.

Honestly I really wanted to like this book. It had potential. But it is too bogged down in quirks to merit more than two stars.

[Berengaria]

DNF nach nicht mal 50 Seiten. Nerviges Geschwafel über langweilige Nichtigkeiten. Alle Figuren sind irgendwie gleich und gar nichts, aber rein gar nichts, passiert. Sehr viel Backstory. Nicht schlecht geschrieben, nur verwirrend und blass.

[HuubHoii.leest · Rating 2 out of 5]

Een verhaal om lastig in te komen. Zoveel personages. Pas halverwege het boek begon ik de lijnen een beetje te zien. En sommige verhaallijnen worden wel aangewend maar niet beëindigd.

Sommige zinnen waren ook zeer warrig vertaald of slecht in een ebook gezet.

Niet helemaal mijn boek.

[Ann Gallo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great story, an enjoyable read. little mystery with tangles family and friends relationships.

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love really getting to know these characters, most of whom have been in every book Marcia Willett wrote.

[Jrobert · Rating 3 out of 5]

Simple read. I enjoy the authors descriptions of the English countryside along with her family stories that intertwine with mysteries from days gone by.

[Denise · Rating 4 out of 5]

Full disclosure: I was chosen a First Reads winner, and received a hardbound copy of this book complete with its lovely dust jacket illustrating The Sea Garden.

I thoroughly enjoyed this beautifully-written tale of three generations of a family, as it unfolds through the eyes of Jess, the winner of an award that literally leads her to discover all of them and her connection to them. The characters and their relationships are an enchanting mix, as realistic as you'd find in any family. The story that Marcia Willett reveals is logical yet holds the reader's interest, and managed to surprise me in the end -- something I always enjoy! The descriptions of the sea and its lure, the moor, and the sea garden are not overly done but allowed me to visualize the raw beauty each of those locales. The prose is lyrical and flows smoothly. Once I started the book, I enjoyed it so much that I didn't want to stop reading it until I had finished the story.

I would highly recommend this book to those who enjoy literary fiction, particularly to Anglophiles.

[Marjorie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am "stuck" on Marcia Willett!!! I simply cannot get enough of her gentle novels. It's not that the characters don't have problems, it's just that they learn to deal with them in a good way. There is no violence, bad language, graphic sex. Just nice people, the ones you want for your closest neighbor, best friend, oldest friend. The kind of people you really want to spend your time with. These are the kinds of people who actually populate a good part of the world, but the ones you hear about most often are the ones who cause problems. The ones you really don't want to have living next door. I wonder if Ms. Willett in reality finds all the good she can in the people she encounters? The setting is Cornwall, the one place in the world I really would love to see. I didn't realize that ECHOES OF THE DANCE came after this. I read that one first and wondered why the characters in The Sea Garden seemed so familiar. Now I can't stop until I have read all her books.

[Beth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maybe 2.5 stars. Some of my favorite novels have dozens of characters, but they’re relatively easy to keep track of because of distinctive names, styles of speaking and behaving, and some clarity about who’s related to whom. I was 3/4 through before it became clear that a man and woman who were living together were father and daughter, not husband and wife. The only distinctive character here is Jess, who coincidentally has won a prize sponsored by a large family she is related to? Reading scene after scene of mostly quotidian chit-chat that inches the plot forward is like watching an old-style soap opera in which each day’s episode allows every character to discuss and respond to a key plot point. The Sea Garden was good before-bed reading, as it was virtually guaranteed to put me to sleep.

[Raha · Rating 1 out of 5]

I received this book through a Goodreads giveaway. The plot sounded interesting from the summary and vaguely reminiscent of a Kate Morton type book where there are flashbacks to the past. However, as soon as I started reading I got lost in the large number of characters (with very similar names) who were introduced all at once. It's hard to keep track of who's who and what generation they belong to, especially since the writing doesn't do much to make the characters sound different. Also, the flashbacks are not distinguished in any way and sometimes you don't even know you're reading a flashback until halfway through. All of which made the book just tedious to read and a struggle to finish.

[Rosemary · Rating 1 out of 5]

Prepare to be bombarded by character! Lots and lots of them, you'll need a scorecard to keep them all straight. Makes it very tough for the reader, I almost gave up. Especially considering how much detail the author goes into for some of these characters, which are really out on the fringes. Some of them, Mark and Giles for example, aren't even involved in the main storyline. The story keeps flipping from past to present and gets murky in spots. Even the big reveal ending was a big yawn. This Sea Garden deserves a Viking Funeral.

[Angela · Rating 1 out of 5]

I gave up quite early on because I just couldn't keep track of all the characters. I couldn't remember who was who and how they were all interconnected. I think the only way I could have done so was to write them down so I could refer back to it. I then realised that reading the book wasn't worth all that hard work, so I'm disappointed to say that the book beat me. Shame!
Perhaps I'll attempt it again one day, but not soon!

[Shirley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this up at my local library $1 sale i read quite a few of her books years ago and was looking forward to it at first I thought it must have been a sequel to a previous book there were so many characters and storylines from the 1st chapter, once I'd made a rough "character tree" enjoyed it and the interlocking yachting families on the Devon English coast

[Sophie Houston]

Unfathomable and unreadable.

[Vicki Carbone · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very sweet book. Also very English. This lovely novel, very character driven, explores the interconnectedness of friends and family and how the choices of one can alter and warp the lives of many.

[Julie Durnell · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved it but if you haven't read her earlier books it's not going to come together as well for you. The setting is wonderful as usual, want to visit there myself someday!

[Kim Denise · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is an unnecessarily long novel featuring a huge cast of indistinguishable characters held together by the merest wisp of a plot. Its saving grace is its strong sense of place, shared by the three Marcia Willett novels I've read, and the reason I stuck with it all the way to the end. (Although "end" is too decisive a word for the way this novel fades into silence.)

I nearly gave up when I reached 28% and still wasn't sure who was who or why I was supposed to care. The book lurches back and forth between characters (many, many characters) and time periods without any clues as to who is speaking or when, so I had to keep going back and re-reading. The characters' voices are virtually indistinguishable; with the exception of a couple of grumpy men, they are all rather pleasant, rather posh, and largely expressionless. But I was enjoying spending time along the river and increasingly curious about why this was even a book at all, so I kept going. Spoiler: it does get a little better. Nothing really happens, but it all starts to hang together enough to at least make a story, and a pale version of Willett's trademark sense of warm community finally develops as well.

This won't stop me reading more Marcia Willett novels. I enjoy her gentle, warm stories with their strong love of place. I just don't recommend this one.

[Puck · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dit boek heeft veel potentie, maar had nog een revisie nodig.

Het plot dat Jess ontdekt dat ze nog een familie heeft door overspel en het drama van Gemma en Guy die moeten besluiten of ze gaan scheiden (en de angst van Gemma's ouders over een geschiedenis die zichzelf herhaald) biedt veel kansen. Bovendien is de onbetrouwbare verteller een aangename verrassing.

Tegelijkertijd is het onduidelijk wat de verschillende personages exact van elkaar vinden (met regelmaat passen ze hun mening aan), voelt de dialoog vaak geforceerd (hoewel dat ook aan de vertaling kan liggen) en worden sommige passages woord voor woord meerdere keren herhaald.

Mijn vermoeden is dat het boek beter was geweest als er vier duidelijke pov's waren: Kate, Jess, Gemma en Rowena. Ook mag de verhaallijn op de schop zodat het aantal terugblikken minder wordt en de vele herhaling om andere personages in te lichten verdwijnen. De onbetrouwbare verteller Rowena mag meer ruimte innemen, de lezer mag meer meegenomen worden in het leggen van de puzzelstukjes en het gevoel dat de geschetste oplossing niet klopt.

Veel potentie dus, maar te snel gepubliceerd.

[Helen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read a review before I started this that said it was very hard to read because there were so many characters thrown at you it was overwhelming to keep straight who was who. As I read the Prologue I absolutely agreed. (And let’s not even talk about the confusing switches between past and present from paragraph to paragraph)
Perseverance got me to the first chapter and suddenly it began to dawn on me I already knew some of the main players - from books I’d already read! Imagine. As their story lines came back to me it all began to become cohesive.
None of Marcia Willets books are presented in a timeline series or as sequels. But after having read this one I can certainly see where it’s better to have read the previous books so you can walk back into their lives and know what’s going on. It was a bit of a pleasant surprise for me.

[Molly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Novel about a young artist, Jess, who, through coincidence, comes to live with a family that she learns is related to her own family. Set in contemporary England on the Devon coast, the book uses flashbacks — including repetition of paragraphs two or three times when characters are remembering or thinking about what we’ve already been told — to tell a story about family, friends, betrayal and forgiveness. A gentle read, with lots of adultery. Too many characters for me to follow well but I liked the pace and slice of life feeling of the book.

[Tracie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was my first time reading anything by Marcia Willet. I was told her writing was similar to Rosamunde Pilcher but I felt this novel was more modern so more like the work of Robin Pilcher, Rosamunde's author son.
I enjoyed the novel, but it was difficult at first to keep track of everyone because there were so many characters.
I didn't realize there were 2 books with some of these characters that came before this. So 3 stars because it might have been better had I read those other 2..
I'd recommend reading the earlier books first or start with a more stand alone novel.