- Hardcover: 208 pages
- Publisher: Scribner (April 9 2002)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0743225953
- ISBN-13: 978-0743225953
- Product Dimensions: 21.6 x 14.2 x 2.3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 363 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #655,599 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
When Browning and her husband of 15 years divorced, she kept the house and garden they had shared in Westchester, but for a long time she was too depressed to care about where she lived. Gradually, she begins to see that working on the house she had neglected and transforming it into a home again is a way to recover from her despondency. In these short, elegant essays, Browning, a former editor-in-chief of House & Garden, muses on the aspects of domestic life that revived her and shows how she healed her heart and her home at the same time. That symbol of doomed love, the master bedroom, for example, she had abandoned. She fills the bathroom with comfortable furniture and flowers and learns to enjoy lounging in the tub while looking out the window at the moon. A garden bench, a fireplace, chairs grouped together for companionship, the long-neglected garden, impractical objects like a grand piano or ornate candlesticks, the kitchen, a place for companionship as well as "a nice place to be lonely" all these she comes to revere. Soon even the moss-covered bricks in her crumbling driveway delight her, as do ordinary rituals like weeding the garden, planting a tree and cleaning her closets so she can enjoy the memories they contain. Browning has written a warm and graceful paean to the commonplace, imbuing everything she contemplates with magic.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Browning expands on her popular column for House & Garden.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
When I was divorced my sense of home fell apart. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
When I was divorced my sense of home fell apart. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most helpful customer reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
I expected a little more...,
By Ailsa J Francis (Zone 4-5 Canada) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Around the House and in the Garden: A Memoir of Heartbreak, Healing, and Home Improvement (Paperback)
I wanted to be enraptured by this book, since I am a gardener and home lover as well. But I just felt it was a veneer of what Ms. Browning was experiencing. Maybe its because when one is a public person, as she was after editing a national magazine for so long, it is not easy to expose oneself completely.
The chapters do read as separate and distinct columns -- no real relationship to one another -- and are easy to digest independently. But I wished for more content, more details and more depth. There is no question she is a sensitive and passionate person and this does come through in her writing, but I felt she was either holding back or couldn't translate this into a sustained script. And for those gardeners out there, don't pick it up expecting much about actually getting your hands dirty. If you want to read a book about gardens and their healing power, try reading Monty Don's The Jewel Garden: A Story of Despair and Redemption (Hodder & Stoughton Ltd, 2005).
5.0 out of 5 stars
I'd Give it 10 Stars if I could,
By A Customer
This review is from: Around the House and in the Garden: A Memoir of Heartbreak, Healing, and Home Improvement (Paperback)
Sometimes a book comes along that changes our outlook--perhaps even pulls us from despair. Ms. Browning's book seemed to take my hand and yank me from the quagmire. She seemed to be saying, You are not the first woman to let a garden run to seed or to watch small trees sprout from your gutters! You are not the only woman who has made a mistake--whether it's choosing the wrong a sofa . . . or man. Giving ourselves permission to fix our lifes can often be as difficult as repairing a gas leak --the job is far too difficult and dangerous to contemplate. Setting ourselves free isn't painless--in fact, "setting" is the wrong word. It is more like ripping and tearing; although sometimes it can be more like a surgical separation--no matter, all methods are painful and require a period of rest and healing. That is the most important concept of the book--in her inimitable style, she gently reminds us that it is "okay" to let things go to seed, and that our houses and gardens are barometers of our emotional lives. These barometers will let us know when it is time to rebuild the nest.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great read!,
By A Customer
This review is from: Around the House and in the Garden: A Memoir of Heartbreak, Healing, and Home Improvement (Paperback)
Reminiscent of Jackson McCrae's "THE BARK OF THE DOGWOOD--A Tour of Southern Homes and Gardens" (though that book goes very deep into the lives of houses), Browning's book is full of heart-warming stories and insight into what really makes up a home. The details she notices are amazing and she brings them to life for us with a sense of poetry and style. What a brave and caring book she's given us.
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