Review by Booklist Review
The telling is done by a woman gardener who worked for a wealthy business man and art collector at his vast estate in Scotland until he mysteriously disappeared. In a sequence of interview sessions with someone planning to make a movie about Curtis Doyle's life--he made his fortune in fashion with the help of his late wife--the gardener recounts arresting events, beginning with the terrible car crash in Cambodia that left hard-charging Curtis with a head injury that altered him in curious ways. British novelist Buckley makes rich use of this one-sided narrative as the reader learns more and more about Curtis' complicated life and gains a growing appreciation for just how smart, attentive, perceptive, and funny the gardener is. As she shares keen observations and gossip and describes and analyzes the multiplying conflicts and rivalries among Curtis' family members, associates, lovers, and other estate staff, the gardener also provides intriguing glimpses into her own life. A finely honed and richly pleasurable illumination not only of the privileges and pitfalls of elites but also of universally human quirks and longings.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
This mesmerizing page-turner from Buckley (Live; Live; Live) takes the form of a transcribed interview with a woman employed as a gardener for a fabulously wealthy self-made Englishman who might be dead. The form, which has the feel of a talking head interview for a documentary but isn't explicitly framed, creates instant suspense, and the dramatic opening--"Shall we start with the crash? Seems an obvious place," says the unnamed interview subject--draws readers quickly into the story of her employer, Curtis, the founder of a high-end retail chain. Key elements of that life story include a difficult upbringing in various foster homes in England's gloomy Midlands and complicated romantic entanglements (be it his sincere attachment to his late wife who died young or his long-running affair with a Swiss art buyer whose pretensions the gardener hilariously satirizes). The gardener also lays bare the wastrel tendencies of Curtis's children in anecdotes about their drug abuse and bitcoin investments. As Buckley gradually winds toward the details of the aforementioned crash, which took place while Curtis was in Cambodia on business, he asks readers to think about how and why stories are told. This self-reflexivity results in a thought-provoking, artfully constructed narrative enriched by the mysteries that expand and proliferate throughout. It's a deliciously fraught tour de force. (Mar.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
In a series of extended soliloquies, a rich man's gardener tells what she knows and believes about him. There's plenty of interest in the life of Curtis, a British tycoon and art collector who's gone missing. He'd already survived the death of his wife and then his own serious car crash, and both of those left him a very different man, at least according to his staff, including the unnamed narrator of this novel who speaks for them. She speaks for everyone who knew him, actually, though she acknowledges that others had very different impressions of Curtis and his familial and romantic relationships. Lily was his wife, and her keen eye for fashion helped him amass his fortune. The younger and icier Karolina had a similar eye for art, helping turn his collection into a substantial investment. Karolina and Curtis may have been involved even before Lily's death, though the narrator insists from the start that "Lily is what it's about, in my opinion." Then there's Lara, a journalist who wrote a profile of Curtis that led to a book project that attempts to bridge what he was before the accident and what he became. It has inspired some sort of film, and her series of interviews with the gardener is providing background. The gardener, who isn't central to Curtis' story, doesn't have much inside information but is an attentive observer. Although she says at one point, "Things will become clearer, I promise," things become less clear as she engages in discursive ramblings involving Curtis' family and staff who may or may not be central to the plot, whatever the plot is. She is "a non-stop talk machine," and her narrative is the novel's. A novel about the nature of storytelling, and who gets to tell and shape the story. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
