While I wait for spring to arrive in my part of the world, I’m recommending a novel full of wintery delights. The Winter Garden by British author Alexandra Bell has a plot which genuinely surprised me. When you read as much Fantasy as I do, that doesn’t often happen. The Winter Garden was published in 2021 and is easily available in paperback or as an ebook. The sparkling cover looks romantic but be warned, this Dark Fantasy novel should probably be classified as an Anti-Romance.

The story begins with a prologue set in a version of early 19th century England. Eight-year old Lady Beatrice Sitwell is recovering from a brutal operation on her tongue, which was meant to cure her stutter, but her mother is dying after many months of illness. When Beatrice’s father takes her to say goodbye she is so horrified by the change in her beloved mother’s appearance that she runs away. Lord Sitwell is furious with Beatrice and the only person who tries to comfort her is James Sheppard, the Head Gardener’s son. She enjoys James’ company even though he is only a servant because they both love plants. After her mother dies, Beatrice can’t even bear to read the letter that Lady Sitwell has left for her and throws it away.

At this low point, Beatrice receives a mysterious invitation from The Spider Queen to enter her Winter Garden at thirteen o’clock. For seven nights running, Beatrice visits an enchanting garden filled with delights such as ice roses, shining black apples, musical frogs and a sparkling tiger. On the day of her mother’s funeral, the Winter Garden disappears, leaving Beatrice with nothing but memories and a few apple seeds. She is determined to find the garden again even if it takes her the rest of her life.

Seventeen years later, orphaned Beatrice is a very wealthy heiress. Relatives have arranged a suitable marriage for her with Eustace Hamilton, Duke of Chalkley. No-one has ever believed her accounts of the Winter Garden even though sinister black apple trees now grow in the grounds of her home, Half Moon House. Eustace is young and handsome but Beatrice is intimidated by his dominating mother. When Beatrice discovers that a doctor has been summoned to cure her of her continuing stutter and her hysterical imaginings, she refuses to marry the Duke and vows to dedicate her life to the study of Botany.

One of the few people to admire Beatrice’s shocking decision is her friend, the American heiress, Rosa Warren. Rosa is not only immensely wealthy but a skilled artificer who designs intelligent clockwork creatures. After the scandal, Rosa sees an opportunity for herself. She turns down a proposal from a self-made man whom she likes because she has set her sights on marrying into the British nobility. While Beatrice is travelling the world searching for magical plants and traces of the elusive Winter Garden, Rosa marries the Duke of Chalkley. She soon finds herself subjected to physical and mental cruelty by the Duke and his mother as they try turn her into a subservient wife. Rosa creates 50 clockwork ravens to protect herself in the Duke’s gloomy mansion which seems to be haunted by a mysterious child.

After many adventures abroad, Beatrice brings back extraordinary and previously unknown plants. Even though she has the support of James Sheppard, who is now a renowned plant-hunter, Beatrice’s discoveries are rejected by an all male learned society. She is bitterly disappointed and sinks into depression. Meanwhile Rosa gives birth to two daughters, annoying the Duke who wants a male heir. The babies gradually win all of Rosa’s love but she has been warned in a prophecy that there is heartbreak ahead. As Beatrice and Rosa endure anguish and regret they each receive an invitation from the Spider Queen to enter a competition to create a garden which will bring wonder and amazement into people’s lives. The creator of the winning garden will be granted a wish with the last of the magic from the Winter Garden.

Both Beatrice and Rosa are desperate to go back in time and change decisions which have blighted their whole lives. The former friends become bitter rivals. With the help of James, Beatrice fetches magical plum trees from China to be the centrepiece of her beautiful Ice Gardens at Half Moon House. Rosa, who has been given a book which describes the Winter Garden, plans to use her skills to recreate a magical carousel at the heart of her Fire Gardens. Which of them will win the wish and will they use it wisely?

Technically, The Winter Garden is an Historical Fantasy with the main part of the story beginning in June 1836. This use of specific dates is somewhat misleading. While the early part of Beatrice’s story does resemble a Regency Romance gone wrong, Rosa and her mechanical marvels really belong with the husband-hunting Dollar Princesses of the late 19th century. For Beatrice’s career as a Botanist and her plant and artefact-hunting adventures, Bell seems to have taken inspiration from a number of famous 19th century women such as Marianne North, Mary Kingsley and Beatrix Potter, sometimes using specific incidents from their lives. I felt that this should have been acknowledged in an afterword. Sadly, there is no faulting Bell’s research on the dire legal postion of most married women during the 19th century and the cruel or harmful treatments inflicted on women by doctors. Poor Beatrice is proscribed laudanum for her depression and becomes an opium addict.

The Prologue makes it easy to empathise with Beatrice even if some of her actions, such as throwing away her dead mother’s letter, do seem rather extreme. Ambitious Rosa is less obviously sympathetic at first but once she is trapped in an unhappy marriage, most readers will be rooting for her. Bell initially appears to be writing a story about the strength of female friendships with a pair of a heroines who are typical of modern Historical Fiction and Gaslamp Fantasy. There is the talented underdog (Beatrice) whom we expect eventually to triumph in her chosen vocation in spite of male opposition, and the smart free-spirited women (Rosa) whom we expect to escape from a bad relationship and find happiness with a new partner.

None of these expectations are met in this tough-minded novel. Beatrice and Rosa are far too complex to fit into feel-good fiction. These flawed women both do and say some truly shocking things in the course of the story, sending my sympathies swinging between the two of them as their friendship breaks under pressure. Plant-loving Beatrice and James appear to be a well-suited couple but she cannot overcome the barrier of Class, and her early experiences have taught Beatrice to reject human relationships of any depth. Rosa scorns the idea of marrying purely for love and is too proud to admit that her marriage has been a terrible mistake. Her inventive use of increasingly monstrous clockwork creatures to punish her callous husband, almost made me feel sorry for the Duke, who has been emotionally crippled by his own upbringing. Rosa is eventually redeemed by her unselfish love for her daughters but in one of the darkest twists in the plot we are cleverly shown how disastrous motherhood would have been for Beatrice.

A common theme in Fantasy fiction of all eras, is the idea of a magical place which unhappy people can escape into – if only for a while. In the Prologue, the Winter Garden seems designed to appeal to a miserable child and has a charming Alice in Wonderland quality, as Beatrice is brought an invitation by a luminous gold-crowned frog and told to follow the dancing mushrooms to find her magic garden. As an arachnophobe, I would never have accepted an invitation from someone calling themself The Spider Queen, but Beatrice likes creepy-crawlies. When Rosa is given a picture-book featuring The Winter Garden, she assumes that it is just a children’s story which Beatrice has confused with reality. As Beatrice grows up, the magic seems to be corrupted as she tries to buy her way back into it by spending a fortune on artefacts which may have come from the Winter Garden.

Later in the novel, Beatrice and Rosa both crave the magic of the Winter Garden to banish the painful consequences of mistakes they have made but is this possible without also banishing the things they have gained from their experiences? In Beatrice’s enchanting Ice Gardens magic is used in two disturbing ways. Rain falling from the grove of plum trees shows people lives that might have been theirs if they had taken a different path. Rosa’s vision of the contented life she would have had if she had chosen her first suitor is almost unbearably sad to read about. Anyone who manages to eat one of the bitter plums, discovers which of their actions they will regret the most. The Duke’s regret turns out to be a particularly shocking one. Rosa’s Carousel of Icicles can take people back in time to re-live an important memory, which Beatrice uses to spend time with her long dead mother. One of the carousel horses has the additional power of allowing its rider to alter what happened during the memory. Rosa has longed for this power but deciding what to change turns out to be far harder than she ever imagined.

The Winter Garden is a beautifully written book which uses magic in sophisticated and thought provoking ways. As a keen gardener, I particularly appreciated all the magical plants, such as Beatrice’s beloved but carniverous apple trees with their midnight-blue blossom, glossy black fruit and mouths in their craggy bark. Bell explores both the comforts and the dangers of using the world of the imagination as an escape route. Are the magical wishes, gifts and prophecies in the story precious gifts? Or are they just ways of avoiding responsibility for a person’s actions and their consequences? Everyone has things they wish they had done differently, but does an obsession with changing the mistakes of the past, stop Beatrice and Rosa from making the best of their present? This story did bring me wonder and amazement but also made me reflect on my own choices in life and what I might have lost or gained if I had changed those choices. Beatrice’s plum magic comes with the warning that these experiences may be as shocking as they are fascinating. The same is true of this novel. Until next month…

Geraldine

March 2025