The Corner Garden
Jessie Barfoot is precocious, witty and wounded, her standards too high for ordinary life. In this moving novel, Jessie befriends a Dutch refugee whose secrets threaten them both.
“I think I’ll call myself Gretel in this book. It’s not really my name. My name is really Jessie Barfoot, which is a perfectly respectable name, I guess, except that there’s nothing respectable about me. That’s one of the reasons we moved to Toronto. I’ve reached the age of fifteen and a half, and we’re going to get a New Start.”
Old secrets and new starts stand at the centre of The Corner Garden. Questions of being right–and very wrong—are intertwined in a story that moves between modern-day Toronto and occupied Amsterdam during the Second World War.
We meet Jessie Barfoot in in the first pages of Lesley Krueger’s widely-acclaimed third novel, a literary work called “both hysterically funny and deeply troubling” by critics. Jesse has been raised by single mother Michelle, a part-time student and sometime cab driver. When Michelle marries a kind and charitable lawyer, Jessie feels only dismay.
“I consider myself far too young to have learned the meaning of pro bono,” she tells her diary, “much less feel its impact upon my so-called innocent life.”
After the family settles into a new house, Jessie’s curiosity is piqued by their cranky next door neighbour. Originally from the Netherlands, Martha van Telligen is a superb gardener with a secret she’s guarded ferociously since she was Jessie’s age. Yet once Jessie charms her way into the garden, Martha’s past begins a slow bleed into Jessie’s uncertain present, threatening both their futures.