The Physic Garden - Softcover

Catherine Czerkawska

Softcover

ISBN 10: 190864351X ISBN 13: 9781908643513

Publisher: Saraband, 2014

Synopsis

'Moving, poetic and quietly provocative' - The Independent. City life in the early nineteenth century was never short of drama: poverty and pollution preyed on all but the lucky few, and 'resurrection men' prowled the streets to procure corpses for anatomists to experiment on. Life is improving, however, for young William Lang, who begins courting Jenny, a fine needlewoman, and forms an unlikely friendship with botanist Dr Thomas Brown while working in the physic garden for a leading professor of surgery. At first, William relishes the opportunity to extend his knowledge of plants and their healing properties while foraging in the countryside in the service of his new friend. The young couple's relationship blossoms, until seeds of trouble threaten to grow out of control.

About this title

Review:

Follows the fortunes of a working-class gardener in early 19th-C Glasgow who dreams of escaping the intellectual and social confines of his life. Upwardly mobile through his friendship with a professor of botany at the university, he is brought crushingly to earth by his friend's betrayal of his trust and by the brutal realities of the era. Czerkawska tells her tale in a restrained, elegant prose that only adds to its poignancy. --The Sunday Times pick of historical fiction

The Physic Garden is not just a good novel. This, I contend, is a great novel. It is a beautiful, elegant, at times elegiac, expression and exploration of betrayal. --Cally Phillips, IEBR Review

'This is a delicious, rich, fragrant casserole, a slow-cooking story stew, reducing gradually and becoming enriched with years, with lives, with observation, as a garden grows and adds layers of stalks, seeds and harvest, the cycles of life and death rolling with the seasons... Catherine Czerkawska gets into the minds and bodies of our past, as the characters literally get into the minds and bodies of their fellow humans, and into the fertile and sometimes hostile elements of the earth; how they deal with what they learn, and the high price that learning exacts. In this superb story told by a writer who wears learning lightly but with respect, who can blend tragedy with humour, loss and survival, is a world we can inhabit for a time, a peep through the door into the walled garden of the past.'--Lydia Bennet

Catherine Czerkawska gets into the minds and bodies of our past, as the characters literally get into the minds and bodies of their fellow humans, and into the fertile and sometimes hostile elements of the earth; how they deal with what they learn, and the high price that learning exacts. In this superb story told by a writer who wears learning lightly but with respect, who can blend tragedy with humour, loss and survival, is a world we can inhabit for a time, a peep through the door into the walled garden of the past. --Valerie Laws, Authors Electric

'Heart-warming, realistic and page-turning' --Lorraine Kelly.

'Powerful' --John Burnside

The Physic Garden is not just a good novel. This, I contend, is a great novel. It is a beautiful, elegant, at times elegiac, expression and exploration of betrayal. --Cally Phillips, IEBR Review

'This is a delicious, rich, fragrant casserole, a slow-cooking story stew, reducing gradually and becoming enriched with years, with lives, with observation, as a garden grows and adds layers of stalks, seeds and harvest, the cycles of life and death rolling with the seasons... Catherine Czerkawska gets into the minds and bodies of our past, as the characters literally get into the minds and bodies of their fellow humans, and into the fertile and sometimes hostile elements of the earth; how they deal with what they learn, and the high price that learning exacts. In this superb story told by a writer who wears learning lightly but with respect, who can blend tragedy with humour, loss and survival, is a world we can inhabit for a time, a peep through the door into the walled garden of the past.'--Lydia Bennet
'Heart-warming, realistic and page-turning' - Lorraine Kelly.
'Powerful' John Burnside. --
--John Burnside

About the Author:

Catherine Czerkawska is a novelist and playwright based in Scotland. She has written several plays for the stage and BBC Radio 4, and has published numerous short stories and novels, including The Curiosity Cabinet, which was shortlisted for the Dundee International Book Prize.

About this edition

• Publisher: Saraband
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 190864351X
• ISBN 13: 9781908643513
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288