Paths of Desire

The Passions of a Suburban Gardener
by Dominique Browning

I wanted to read a novelistic book about gardening, and what better than one written by an author whose backyard garden was in the suburbs, like me? But Paths of Desire, promising at the beginning, failed to keep my attention after some forty pages. I got tired of reading about the history and architecture of her house, the difficulties in rebuilding a collapsed wall, the arguments with neighbors over trees. I wanted to read about horiculture. I began skimming passages (always a bad sign) and then skipped to the chapter about vermin. Sadly, even the descriptions of her small war against raccoons and skunks was uninteresting. So I quit.

Abandoned ..0/5..... 237 pages, 2004