The timing of the piece, with the Second World War still fresh in the minds of all the characters, adds perfectly to the aura of suspense and mystery that surrounds this summer's Richard and Judy Book Club find. In piecing together a tale of love, injustice and penitence from 400 years earlier, Adam Strickland - the young Cambridge University student sent to study the garden - must deal with the guilty confessions of the Italian family he visits.
Throughout most of the story, Adam is hopelessly out of his depth, his intelligence no match for the wily ways of those much older and wiser than he.
The story is carried along with surprising ease and captures the mood of the period with perfection. The summer heat and bonhomie of the Docci family transport the reader to long lazy days punctuated by the sound of crickets and laughter wafting on the breeze. Although defined as a thriller, the subject matter is more of penitence and regret. The garden unearths a tale of love from centuries before, with each revelation enabling each family member to reveal their own secret.
However, as many of these secrets have been buried for decades, the emotion has less of a raw quality, and therefore feels more regrettable. While vengeance may be necessary, the overriding feeling that the characters have served penitence prevails, obliterating the need for justice as we know it to be carried out.
Mills never insults his reader by overstating the obvious, and educates with his use of classical texts, renaissance art and mythical stories. He cleverly uses an outsider - Adam - to tell the tale, therefore succeeding in creating no bias. If you read this story, then you should read Dante's The Divine Comedy, from where much of his story bases its intrigue. He is not the first writer to use this classic piece of literature as an analogy. Jodi Picoult also uses the poem in The Tenth Circle.
However, while she has her characters firmly living Dante's treacherous tale of living through hell but both show how literature can be used time and again to prove that human nature rarely changes. The same mistakes are made with every generation. Mills shows that however far we journey, we can never escape our overriding emotions.
