Popular fiction is more often than not distinguished by the size of the narrative. Romance needs time and space. In Paullina Simons's new book, The Summer Garden, it takes her 839 pages to complete the story begun with The Bronze Horseman and then continued in The Bridge to Holy Cross. Both have been bestsellers. Readers will now have the pleasing sense of closure with The Summer Garden. This does not come without some emotionally demanding moments.
Simons is a capable storyteller. The Summer Garden is an evenly paced, perhaps too evenly paced, extended narrative. The movement of the story is sometimes slow and overly detailed, punctuated by events of high drama and danger. These events do create a sense of palpable tension, but some readers might just give up. To do so would be a pity.
Besides the intense love of Tatiana and Alexander being central to the earlier books, in The Summer Garden there are cracks in the relationship. Tatiana is a dutiful wife but she has not developed as a woman to the point that she is wholly convincing. For Simons to say of her, "She never did know what to do" suggests that Tatiana is not a woman in her own right. There was ample scope for her to be so.
The earlier two books used war as their backdrop. Simons knows her Russian history. Her father was a survivor of World War II and the Gulag and was a political dissident. In The Summer Garden, Tatiana and Alexander now have a son, Anthony. This should have been the seal of a love that was born of pain, fear of loss. It isn't.
The Summer Garden shifts the trilogy to America, the land of postwar hope and promise. The story begins with Alexander having a job as a fisherman and Tatiana, the pliant wife, waiting for him onshore. The problem is that out of their hardship and separation, they have become comparative strangers.
Simons handles with aplomb the tentative seeking of what was once so strong in the hearts and minds of her two primary characters. They did love each other desperately and despite tensions in their newly reunited relationship, Simons never lets us forget that their love is historic and monumental.
Simons has written a book that is high on feeling and suspense. The way she gradually reveals the pressure on Anthony as he develops as a young man is particularly well done and the conflict he has with his father is convincingly evoked.
This is ultimately a satisfying book - notwithstanding a few dull patches. Although it helps to have read the first two books for background, that should not deter readers from walking with Simons in The Summer Garden.