Product Details

• Published on: 1996-10
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 220 pages

From Publishers Weekly
This journal of a comically obsessed gardener chronicles not only the plantings, prunings and what "went bust" but also the emotional divagations of a hip New Yorker transplanted to California. Gardening metaphors abound here to illuminate the author's relationships with her divorced parents, the challenges of siblings and her mixed emotions about an imminent marriage to her longtime companion. Frustrations lurk, both personal and garden variety, especially in the garden where she works so hard "and it still looks like hell." Among gardening tips and rose obsessions are wry observations about sisterhood and the comic aspects of the forthcoming wedding. Spiegelman, an assistant director and a member of the Director's Guild of America, writes knowingly of the travails of responsible adulthood in a way that is appealing to women.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Poor Annie finds so much to complain about?her past, her job, her garden, her shrink, her relatives, her fiance. "Everything sucks," she writes, "especially this stupid garden journal." For one year, while tending her California garden, Spiegelman muses about growing up in a broken home in New York City and vying with her three sisters for the love of an angry mother and an absent father. When her companion of seven years proposes, she worries for months because marriage "means fighting, leaving, and broken promises." Spiegelman's hostility, depression, and negative attitude pervade the book. Her rambling, unpolished style is laden with recurrent cliches and vulgar slang. Not recommended.?Ilse Heidmann, San Marcos, Tex.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Call it unorthodox or label it irreverent; by any standard, Spiegelman's garden journal is decidedly unconventional. An irrepressible New Yorker who works in the movie industry as a first assistant director, Annie tends a Northern California garden and cares for cats with significant other, Bill. Aside from musings on their evolving garden landscape, her diary chronicles the relationship as it moves in the direction of marriage. But for Annie--still shell-shocked from her parents' bitter divorce--becoming a bride is a less than smooth passage. As she faces up to the emotional roadblocks left over from childhood, there are frequent and spirited interactions with mother, father, and assorted sisters, infusing her journal with great heaps of love and laughter. Annie's sassy, cynical veneer scarcely conceals a fervent enthusiasm for life's most essential elements. Alice Joyce