The Garden of Small Beginnings (2017) is Abbi Waxman’s first novel, full of her trademark humor and heart. I’ve read her The Bookish Life of Nina Hill (2019) and I Was Told It Would Get Easier (2020) before I started reviewing books here, and Nina Hill is the source of one of my favorite descriptions–“she wasn’t mean; she was painfully accurate.” (I relate to this statement, too much!)
Small Beginnings tells the story of Lillian, her sister Rachel, and Lillian’s two daughters Annabel and Claire. Lillian’s husband Dan was killed in a car crash basically in front of her a few years ago, when Claire was just a baby. After his death, Lillian had a mental breakdown and was hospitalized for a while–Rachel stepped in and took care of the girls. Lillian is better now; she works as an illustrator at a publishing company, sees a grief counselor regularly, and takes care of the girls. She’s still grieving, and has no interest in dating again, even though Rachel resorts to tricks to try to get her to go out and even sets her up.
When she is asked by her work to attend a weekly gardening class on Saturday mornings to help her prepare for illustrating a book on home-grown vegetables, she dutifully brings the kids and Rachel along. There, she meets a full cast of characters who become friends–an older lesbian couple, another single mom who is studying to be a nurse, an older man looking for something to do in his retirement, and a surfer dude who lives in his trailer traveling for the best waves. They are all taught by Edward, a member of the Dutch family business who is commissioning the gardening book and a professor in horticulture.
Through this experience of creating a garden at an Arboretum and at her own home with the assistance of the others in the class, Lillian finally learns to get through her continuing grief–having more people who can empathize with her (and a handsome, kind, Dutch man willing to wait on her timeline) helps tremendously. Though there is a lot of grief, it’s super-cute and very funny–I love Waxman’s humor!
I will admit that the gardening timelines were a bit unrealistic, although maybe in Southern California things are different–in the midwest you can’t go from seeds to harvest in 6 weeks for much of anything. I did enjoy the intros to each chapter that discussed a different type of vegetable, and I loved the audiobook narrator’s depiction of Edward’s accent. I consider it mixed anti-fat and fat-positive, as when Lillian’s narcissistic mother made an anti-fat comment about one of the girls, said child piped in with a weight-neutral message! There is much description about Rachel’s beauty and “hotness” and Lillian does make some self-deprecating statements about her own post-motherhood body, but all-in-all, it was mostly weight-neutral.
Reading While Fat 