Griefwork: A Novel

by James Hamilton-Paterson

In the wake of World War II, an eccentric European curator struggles to keep alive a greenhouse full of exotic, nocturnal plants, fending off financial threats to their survival and his own creeping insanity

Genres: Fiction

250 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

James Hamilton-Paterson is a British poet, novelist, and one of the most private literary figures of his generation. Educated at Exeter College, Oxford, he began his career as a journalist before emerging as a novelist with a distinctive lyrical style. He gained early recognition for Gerontius, a Whitbread Award-winning novel, and went on to write Ghosts of Manila and America’s Boy, incisive works reflecting his deep engagement with the Philippines. His interests range widely, from history and science to aviation, as seen in Seven-Tenths and Empire of the Clouds. He also received praise for his darkly comic Gerald Samper trilogy. Hamilton-Paterson divides his time between Austria, Italy, and the Philippines and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2023.

Reviews

[Karl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Strange, lyrical, beautiful - I'm sure its a metaphor for something but be damned if I know what, doesn't matter, I'm better for having read it

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 5 out of 5]

"In the Botanical Gardens of a European city, just after the Second World War, the palm house's strange curator welcomes guests at night to savour his blooms, which only open after dark. Single-mindedly he has brought his crystal palace of exotic species more or less intact through the ravages of war, and he now struggles to keep its boilers going in a fuel-starved Europe deep in winter's snow. This fragile ark of beauty and order, barely preserved in a violent ugly world, is evoked hauntingly. Yet its survival is threatened by more than coal shortages and the harsh cold winters that tear at the master-gardener's ruined lungs. An enigmatic Asian princess offers him a job in the real tropics even as his academic employers are intriguing to sell the land on which the palm house stands. Moreover, his own fantasies - in which plants can be more articulate then people - are becoming uncontrollable. And what is the significance of the mysterious figure glimpsed among the leaves after the night visitors have gone?

"James Hamilton-Paterson's fable is of a life structured by loss and a lost love. It is also of a longing for perfection in the imaginary order we impose on the natural world so that we may contain our grief." From the flyleaf of the jacket cover of the 1993 hardback edition from Jonathan Cape.

I have quoted the above in full because I don't think the GR synopsis does this remarkable novel justice. But then I am not sure that the publishers blurb does either. When it says 'his (the Gardener Leon) own fantasies - in which plants can be more articulate then people - are becoming uncontrollable...' I was stumped because I didn't read him as a man suffering from fantasies. The plants are very real characters in this novel. That is the core of the novel as, fable? metaphor? bildungesroman? love story? what is this hauntingly beautiful novel saying?

Hamilton-Paterson is an extraordinary writer. In many ways he is unique. I know of no other English author who writes so well and is so unclassifiable and I strongly advise you to read the 2004 profile from The Guardian at: https://www.theguardian.com/books/200.... 'Griefwork' is about so many things love, loss, abandonment, happiness, contentment, man at his best, man at his most despicable, doing right and ending up doing wrong. Over all this completely captivating novel is the Palm House and its plants and, oh so very much more. To say that it doesn't end happily is only to acknowledge that real life rarely has happy endings.

Hamilton-Paterson is an author you do yourself a great disservice by not discovering and reading.

[Tuck · Rating 4 out of 5]

has many of the hallmarks of hamilton-paterson, beautiful compelling characters, pretty good plots and twists, super interior world of the mind. this old fashioned novel of post wwii Europe is a slow meditation on how to get over.

[Velvetink]

$1 Salvos.