Excerpts from reviews of The Paper Garden - and other news

December 22, 2010: The Paper Garden named as one of the Top 20 Books of 2010
     Maclean's magazine - Canada's national newsmagazine - named The Paper Garden as one of the "Top 20 Books of 2010" in its "2010: The Year in Pictures" issue, dated January 3, 2011.
          see the full list

December 16, 2010: The Paper Garden reaches #1 on national bestseller list
     The Paper Garden ranked as #1 (!) on the Non-fiction Bestseller list in Maclean's magazine - reflecting sales across Canada - for December 16, 2010. It was on the Bestseller ilst for 7 weeks in all.
          see the full lists (scroll down to get to December 16)

December 2010: two amazing bookstore window displays featuring The Paper Garden. Click here to see photos.

December 4, 2010: The Globe and Mail ran a full-page, full-color ad for The Paper Garden. Click on the thumbnail image to the left or here to see the ad.

November 27, 2010: The Paper Garden named as one of the "Top 100 of 2010"
     The Globe and Mail, Canada's national newspaper, included The Paper Garden in its "2010 Globe 100" list in its November 27, 2010 issue.

November 17, 2010: The Paper Garden on Non-Fiction award longlist
     The jury for Canada's largest literary non-fiction prize, the BC (British Columbia) National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction, has released its longlist for 2011. The jury panel selected a longlist of 10 books from the 151 titles that were nominated for the prize by publishers from across Canada, and The Paper Garden was one of them!
          read the full press release

September 18, 2010: The Paper Garden named as one of "10 Books You Have to Read This Fall"
     The Globe and Mail named The Paper Garden as one of "10 Books You Have to Read This Fall" in its September 18, 2010 issue.

excerpts from review by Katharine Lochnan in the Literary Review of Canada, March/April 2011:
     To scrupulous research [Molly Peacock] brings poetic sensibility and structures her narrative in a way that echoes the flowers themselves. The result is as innovative a piece of literary craftsmanship as her subject’s was artistic. . . .
     Peacock's book is a carefully crafted work of art in its own right. . . .
     Molly Peacock articulates her themes with grace and artistry. They are as elegantly introduced and intertwined as ribbons on a Maypole. On the last page they come together and are tied in a bow. Although there were moments when I raised my eyebrows, as I closed this beautifully designed book with its exquisite reproductions and sensuous paper, one word came to mind and has remained with me ever since: amazing.
           —Katharine Lochnan, Senior Curator and The R. Fraser Elliott Curator of Prints and Drawings, Art Gallery of Ontario

review by Emily Donaldson in the Toronto Star, January 22, 2011:
     American-born, Toronto-based poet Molly Peacock has produced a winsomely unorthodox ode to Delany that is part biography, part miniature coffee-table book and part memoir. . . .
     Peacock skillfully and tangibly evokes Delany’s era . . . The point Peacock makes most convincingly is that Delany’s rarefied oeuvre, and her late but metaphorically apt “blooming,” was the perfect, logical product of the life that preceded it.
          read the full review

from Shonna Froebel in the Canadian Bookworm blog, January 15, 2011:
     This is a very different book than I expected. Peacock has taken 13 of the 985 works that Delany made and used them to illustrate her life. Each work is the focus of a chapter, and each chapter moves through Mrs. Delany's life from childhood through old age. Each chapter also follows Peacock's writing of this book, from her first awareness of the wonderful art created by Mrs. Delany to the completion of this book. It is a fascinating structure for a biography, a revival of awareness in this amazing set of artwork, and the inspiration that leads a writer to her subject. Wonderful, unexpected, and enlightening.
          read the full blog

from reviews and blogs in Australia and New Zealand:

     Scribe, a publishing house based in Melbourne, has recently offered the reading public one of the best arguments against the ebook that I have seen all year, in its exquisite hard-covered edition of The Paper Garden: Mrs. Delany Begins Her Life Work At 72 by Molly Peacock. . . .
     This book is a treasure for many reasons. It is beautiful with its glossy paper and startling examples of the paper artist's work… in fact "The Paper Garden" is itself is a work of art. It is an unusual biography because not only does it include the author in the story, it implies parallels in the author's and subject's lives. This is sometimes disconcerting, but the biography contains such a delightful cast of real characters from the eighteenth century and a pleasing reconstruction of those times, we can allow what sometimes seems idiosyncratic in its assemblage. And most satisfying, it is a meditation on art, and the ability of a remarkable woman to live her art into very old age. Nice one, Scribe.
     Cheryl Jorgenson Author Blog, January 6, 2011 - read the full blog

     The book is divided into chapters based loosely on a flower picture: Damask Rose, for instance, or Everlasting Pea. Peacock reads in the form, colour and orchestration of each one facets of Delany's life, as if she had composed a botanical autobiography. It's a captivating method, buttressed by sumptuous illustrations (it makes for an attractive hardback) and Peacock's prose, which is as pungent and precise as her subject's flowers. . . .
     Peacock is not the first to write about Delany - there have been several biographies and an edited Letters - but she is original: "some of us flash into floral peak like prom queens, but others of us have to dry like the winter cherry in order to unfold into productivity". The Paper Garden is a blessed relief from the humdrum, a bright feather in a peacock's tail.
     Nicola Walker, from review in Sydney Morning Herald, December 18, 2010, p. 26

THE PAPER GARDEN is a profound and beautiful examination of the nature of creativity and art.
     Channel: North Shore's Monthly Magazine, Issue 6, Dec. 2010-Jan. 2011 - read the full review

A truly fascinating biography of the 18th century botanical artist - Mary Granville Pendarves Delany (1700 - 1788). An extraordinary story . . .
     Clare Calvet's Book of the Week, ABC Local, December 17, 2010 - read the full blog

I will say this. If you're wanting to give a truly exquisite and beautiful present to a friend, go no further than this.
     Meredith, Armchair Delights, December 15, 2010 - read the full blog

I’m always in awe of women’s stories and this one I find particularly appealing.
     Patrice Ryan, Womens Nook, December 5, 2010 - read the full blog

review by Nancy Schiefer in the London Free Press (London, Ontario), December 24, 2010:
     Former Londoner Molly Peacock, who now lives in Toronto, has published a beautifully put together book on late-life creativity and on how it nourishes the waning years and latent talent of Mary Granville Pendarves Delany, 1700-1788. . . .
     The Paper Garden is a lovely book, clever, artfully contrived, wonderfully illustrated and full of surprises. . . .
     Molly Peacock's glance-back at Delany and at the parallels she discovered in her own life is fascinating and original. It is a book to be treasured.
          read the full review: London Free Press - Toronto Sun - Peterborough Examiner - Owen Sound Sun Times - Indiatimes

Oneline Review, January 1, 2011:
     Become her, corseted & sheathed, flowering curious composed she is, hear the soft brush of her scissors 'snip, snip'.
          see the full page

from Ambling Along the Aqueduct (Aqueduct Press in Seattle, Washington), December 28, 2010:
     What does a modern Canadian poet have in common with the C18th English minor aristocrat who invented collage? In this delightful book, plenty. . . .
     Lucy Sussex, The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2010, pt. 25 - Best Feisty Female (C18th Division)
          read the full blog

review by Jane Christmas in Maclean's, November 22, 2010:
     Delany's life and artistry would be compelling enough, but Peacock gives us so much more, and the details and precision of her text mirror the dogged, forensic approach Delany took with her work. Peacock wants us to see how the artist and the art are one.
     Like collage itself, The Paper Garden is carefully layered - part fascinating biography, part history lesson about the English Georgian period, part gripping memoir, part paean, and part art appreciation accompanied by dozens of vivid photo reproductions. Beautifully written and rendered (the pages are printed on heavy glossy paper, the likes of which are rarely encountered in modern publishing), Peacock's obsession for Delany's art and life becomes ours, too.
          read the full review

review by Linda L. Richards in January Magazine, November 15, 2010:
     If you were to dream up the perfect gift for the hardcore book lover, it would look a lot like The Paper Garden (McClelland & Stewart) by Molly Peacock. . . .
     Molly Peacock, a celebrated poet, brings her sharply honed eye and sensibility along to tell Delany’s story. In the process, she embroiders it with her own. The resulting book is more than a beautiful glimpse at Delany’s very interesting life (among other things she dined with Jonathan Swift and fended off Lord Baltimore) but a considered and shared contemplation on art and creativity. . . .
     The Paper Garden is just beautiful and, like Delany’s art, it is challenging to categorize. It is the biography of an interesting and creative woman. It is the memoir of another. It includes 35 color illustrations: portraits of Delany at various stages, examples of her (actually not at all fuddy-duddy) art. And, finally, it is a celebration of shared creativity.
          read the full review

review in BookieMonster blog (from New Zealand), November 12, 2010:
     The Paper Garden is a total delight. From beginning to end, from gorgeous cover to gorgeous cover, it is a joy to read. . . .
     And Mrs Delany’s art. It’s fabulous and the book does it real justice with reproductions of several of the collages, close-ups and fantastic production values, that at once manage to make the book seem both intimate and significant. I not only loved reading this book, I loved holding it and admiring it and turning the pages and smelling the ink. It’s that kind of book.
     In summary, The Paper Garden is simply a beautiful book, in every way. A perfect gift to yourself, or others.
          read the full review

review by Victoria Glendinning in The Globe and Mail, October 30, 2010:
Deciding that the cut-paper mosaics have "the feeling of a memoir," Peacock scrutinizes closely 11 of them and proceeds to free-associate, cutting and pasting Mrs. Delany's life story in small, vivid snippets. She layers these with accounts of her research, and with slices of her own life, which is so very different from Mrs. Delany's that some of the juxtapositions are quite jarring, like clashing colours, as is her defiantly anachronistic description of Mrs. Delany's letters as her "blog." Yet there are parallels: their childlessness, their satisfying second marriages - and, in "a strange way," her subject's early life "lays a ghostly silhouette onto the atmosphere of my own experience."
     Thus, Peacock has structured the whole book as metaphor, a collage about collage, and a meditation on sexuality, friendship and creativity. It both analyzes and exemplifies that obsessional, mesmerized state induced in artists and crafts people through concentration and close observation. The volume itself is a craft object, sumptuously presented and designed, on fine paper, with colophons and decorations, and full-page colour reproductions so that we can test Peacock's responses against our own. If some of the interpretation seems absurd - as Peacock herself fears it might - it is triumphantly absurd. The Paper Garden will be everyone's favourite Christmas present this year.
          —Victoria Glendinning, author of many biographies, including Elizabeth Bowen (1977) and Jonathan Swift: A Portrait (1998)
          read the full review

review by Claire Holden Rothman in the Montreal Gazette on October 23, 2010, the Vancouver Sun on November 6, 2010, and the Edmonton Journal on December 12, 2010:
     The art form was mixed-media collage. The subject matter: flowers - 985 of them, to be exact. Mrs. Delany had been aiming for 1,000, but her eyes gave out at age 82. Each cut-out is botanically correct, with pistil, stamen, stigma and all the rest of a flower's intricate anatomy carefully noted and included. The paper and other materials were ingeniously cut, arranged, and mounted on black backgrounds. The result is stunning, as the 35 full-colour illustrations in this sumptuous hardcover from McClelland & Stewart testify. The Paper Garden provides a wonderful introduction to the Flora Delanica, as the collection is called, and an alternative to flying across the ocean to the British Museum in London, where it is housed. . . .
     The Paper Garden is a fascinating, uplifting and beautiful book.
        read the full review: Montreal Gazette - Vancouver Sun - Edmonton Journal

review by Alison Gillmor in the Winnipeg Free Press, October 23, 2010:
     This rich and poetic hybrid biography follows the life of a remarkable 18th-century Englishwoman, while touching gently on other ideas - the consolations of creativity, the nature of art, and the unexpected gifts of age. . . .
     Mrs. Delany was an unusual woman, and The Paper Garden is an unusual work, part chronological biography, part emotional and artistic autobiography, part meditation on the reach and power of the imagination.
     Teeming with life - and gorgeous colour illustrations - it will appeal to those interested in art and craft, women's history, the 18th century and, of course, anyone looking to redefine "creative retirement."
         read the full review

review by George Fetherling in Quill and Quire, October 2010:
     This wonderful and markedly unusual book by Toronto poet Molly Peacock is both biography and memoir . . .
     Delany's art, now in the British Museum, launched Peacock on a decades-long journey of enlightenment and obsession, as she tried to comprehend how creativity can strike without warning at such an advanced age, and what that may tell us about gender, empowerment, the craft that lies beneath art and literature, and "the floral metaphor as a way of life." . . .
     This is a unique book, one even more remarkable than Mrs. Delany herself.
          — George Fetherling, author of Walt Whtman's Secret
         read the full review