Review: The Seekers’ Garden

The Seekers’ Garden, Isa Pearl Ritchie’s second adult novel, is an introspective and spiritual book, exploring the internal lives and connections of six wounded people. Each separately make decisions to change their lives, embarking on new courses and forging new connections. But secrets and mysteries from their pasts lurk beneath the surface, and the novel draws inexorably toward their reveal.

Marcia has unexpectedly lost her husband in the United Kingdom and travels back to New Zealand to face up to her past. In her childhood home in Hamilton, she begins renewal—the house, the untangling of the overgrown garden and by running a course of self-help sessions. Over the garden wall, Mrs Alice Everglade, an elderly woman struggling with the limitations of her body, watches her.

In Wellington, Iris throws in her unfulfilling job and rents a house in Raglan so she can write a self-help book. Her 16-year-old son Alex accompanies her there, unquestioning, spending his time in online chatrooms. He meets desperately unhappy teenage Lea and they start a fledging relationship. Lea is obsessive; believing herself unloved, she seeks the guidance of long-dead goddesses. Lastly Zane, a famous musician in the United States, is tortured by dreams of two women and decides he must go home to New Zealand to find and speak to them. He left 16 years ago and, like Marcia, has never returned.

All the characters seek meaning in their lives, exploring routes to happiness through different methods: tarot, music, writing poetry, meditation, gardening, rituals. Marcia’s garden is described in lush detail with the renewal of seasons used as a metaphor for the flow and ebb of life satisfaction. The garden and its growth fulfil Marcia and her next-door neighbour; Marcia’s self-help group also visit for their last session and take strength from it. Sections of Iris’ self-help work and Marcia’s meditations pepper the book and the group sessions are used as a vehicle for exploring various philosophical and ideological positions.

The Seekers’ Garden is a long, meditative book, with enjoyable diversions—such as Marcia’s trip to the South Island—which add depth to character but not always to the pace of the story. The characters’ lives are complex, bolstered by deft detail through scenes with the neighbours and communities they live in. Mrs Alice Everglade, when quite unwell, sums it up, “she could feel everything inside-out, every atom, and she was connected with it all.” This can be a little overwhelming at times and there’s the feeling that narrowing the character focus might allow for a faster-paced, tauter book.

It's inevitable that Marcia, Iris and Zane tackle their pasts and in doing so, they collide with long-held secrets not of their making thus unveiling themselves in a dramatic conclusion that challenges their self-acceptance and forces them to re-evaluate.

Ritchie revels in time contemplating spirituality through the lens of many different viewpoints and the book teaches us to examine ourselves with the understanding that true happiness can only be approached from within.

Reviewed by Erica Stretton