The Perfume Garden

February 15, 2015
The multigenerational story of a family unfolds amid the tumult of the Spanish Civil War and the emotional devastation wrought by 9/11 in this second novel from British author Brown (The Beauty Chorus, 2011).When world-renowned perfumer Liberty Temple dies of cancer, she leaves behind a chest of letters for her daughter, Emma, along with the key to a villa in Spain, mysteriously purchased right before her death. Emma is still grieving the loss of her mother when her lover, Joe, is lost in the World Trade Center attacks-and that blow, combined with the fact that she's carrying Joe's baby and the impending sale of the perfume company she built with her mother, is enough to send her off to find the ruined villa in search of a new life. Woven clunkily into the backdrop of Emma's story are the tales of Freya, her grandmother, and her great-uncle Charles-two young idealists from England who joined the fight against Gen. Franco's fascist takeover of Spain in 1936. In a series of scenes that feel more like vignettes, characters are thrust together only long enough to accomplish the author's agenda, making up their minds and then changing them, often without authentic motivation, their dialogue as tinned as the rations they likely ate. Violence, scent, sensuality, and the lush but devastated countryside of Spain make welcome appearances, but the transparency of Brown's characters is too hard to overlook. Some guile and finesse might have gone a long way in helping the characters come more fully to life, but without it, this novel feels like too much effort for insufficient reward. While the premise of Brown's book certainly has roots in an emotional past, this novel unfortunately fails to take flight.

March 15, 2015
Soon after her mother's untimely death, perfumer Emma Temple's fiance and business partner leaves her for another woman. Pregnant with her first child, Emma leaves England for a run-down house in Valencia, Spain, to regroup. The house was purchased by her mother during the last days of her life, and Emma isn't sure why. As she gets to know the locals, she discovers that this small, close-knit community holds the key to secrets that force Emma to question her identity, but they also provide her with a means to recover from her life's tragic turns. British writer Brown's U.S. debut makes good use of multiple time periods, alternating between Emma's life in 2001 and her grandmother Freya and great-uncle Charles' experiences during the Spanish Civil War. This provides a context for the secret of Emma's ancestry, allowing the reader to understand why her grandparents made such difficult decisions during the war. At its core, this is a love story celebrating both romantic and parental love, a tale that fans of romantic women's fiction will enjoy.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)