Review – ‘Threading the Labyrinth’ by Tiffani Angus

“Because what’s a garden if not a place to make things up, to embellish, to dream?” Tiffani Angus

Unsung Stories characterizes itself for being in love with mystery and beautiful words. It usually favors short and medium length stories, those hard to classify, and we have reviewed a few of them here.

In Threading the Labyrinth, Tiffani Angus wants to talk to us about a garden: an enclosed piece of land, next to a manor, and all the inhabitants that have experienced their lives around it, from the 16th century to this day.

In the present day, Toni, the American owner of a failing gallery, is called to England unexpectedly when she inherits a manor house in Hertfordshire from a mysterious lost relative. At first glance, after leaving the New Mexico desert behind, all she finds is a crumbling building, overgrown gardens, and lot of historical paperwork. However, this place is way much more than that.

Going back and forth between different times, we see gardeners, war scenes, Ladyships and Lords. Above all, this land seems to have a history of its own; a history that surpasses every tiny little life, even though for the dwellers of the garden, its mystery is a huge part of their existence.

We see Tony, injured from the war, a changeling who fights for his right to the garden. We see Joan painfully watch his kid dwindle and die. We see a gardener’s daughter learning how to photograph in Victorian times, and how the ghosts of the garden show trough, affecting each and one of them.

“I looked around the garden and put myself in mind of her, taking Mother’s thought’s into my own, to know what she would advise.

That it was a ground of sweet blooms, inside walls that sheltered fruit, and could be read when the sun was fresh.

That it was an old place with much to say, and that I should listen.

That the garden was both birth and death for us all”. Tiffani Angus

Soon Toni will find herself entranced with the history of the house, and all the people who tended the grounds over the centuries. This garden changes in the twilight; bringing forth the ghosts: the figures she sees from the corner of her eye.

All the descriptions of the garden are more than beautiful; they delight themselves in the naming of the flowers, of the orchards and the apparitions. Fat bees, the cold hard ground in winter, all the seasons enclosed between its walls, all the times since the garden was born, they whisper to us through Tifanni’s words.

Threading the Labyrinth is on sale July 13th, 2020.

Publication Date: July 13, 2020

Paperback ISBN: 978-1-912658-09-1
ePub ISBN: 978-1-912658-10-7
Format: Paperback, ePub and mobi

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