Red Gifts in The Garden of Stones: A Tale of Grief and Ghosts and One Small Dog by P.A. Swanborough; Mystical and Relatable Novel About Mothers and Daughters

 Red Gifts in The Garden of Stones: A Tale of Grief and Ghosts and One Small Dog by P.A. Swanborough; Mystical and Relatable Novel About Mothers and Daughters

By Julie Sara Porter 

Bookworm Reviews 

This review is also available on Reedsy Discovery.

Spoilers: I come from a family of mostly women with my mother, myself, and four other sisters as well as two brothers. So I understand what conflicts between mothers and daughters are like. That's probably why P.A. Swanborough’s book, Red Gifts in The Garden of Stones: A Tale of Grief and Ghosts and One Small Dog resonates so much with me. It's about four generations of mothers and daughters who get on one another's nerves but still love each other.

The Coombe Family that resides in Ty Merched (The Women's House) are the type of family that invites suspicious rumors and haunting stories from the other residents in the town of Swansea, Wales. There is just something odd and peculiar about them. 

 Lizzie, the matriarch is celebrating her 100th birthday and she spends most of her time talking to the ghosts that live around her house. Her daughter, Myfanwy feels things strongly and is barely hiding an explosive temper. Myfanwy’s daughter, Sarah Maud practically lives in an alcoholic stupor and haunts the local pub. Sarah Maud’s daughter, Jenner wanders through the woods on endless treks and is fascinated by ancient powers that her ancestors might have had. 

The Coombe women have a love-hate relationship that threatens to explode during the week of Lizzie's birthday when Jenner goes missing, old lovers are reunited, pastor Rev. Morgan incites his flock against the Coombes, a group of hippies and other outsiders show up and befriend the family, a friendly dog appears as a guide, and the family ghosts are begging to be heard by the living.

Red Gifts in the Garden of Stones treads a thin line between Contemporary Fantasy and Historical Fiction/Reality. It describes the real conflicts of a family of women in the late 1960’s in rural Wales but there is always a poetic mystical sense of the other world in the background.

At the forefront, we are given a story of four generations of mothers and daughters who vie with each other and the society around them. These are women who alternate between loving and irritating each other.

Lizzie is in mourning for her late husband and family members. Because of her deep grief, she finds it hard to be emotionally close to the living, often creating friction between herself and her descendants. One could see her behavior as signs of Alzheimer's or dementia but there is just as much evidence that she hangs onto those old memories of her ancestors for emotional reasons. The present is too difficult to live with so she prefers the past and willingly withdraws from those around her.

Lizzie's behavior has been going on since her daughter Myfanwy was very young so naturally she would be bitter and resentful. She is caught between her distant mother and troubled daughter and granddaughter. She is someone who may have had dreams of getting away but family responsibilities tied her down. Now she is stuck at Ty Merched looking after a barely functioning family and becoming more resentful. She too feels abandoned by the man who left her and Sarah Maud and is isolated from the community that spreads rumors about her behind her back and sometimes to her face. 

To face the world around her, Myfanwy barely bites back sardonic comments and expressions and a rising temper that strikes back at everyone else in ire.

Of all of the family members, Myfanwy is the one who has the most potential to one day snap and commit violence, like a vengeance goddess raining her wrath on those who would hurt her and her family.

If Myfanwy reacts in outward anger, Sarah Maud does so inwardly. She isn't a potential danger to anyone but herself. Like her mother and grandmother, she too had been abandoned by the man that impregnated her. Even worse, he was a prominent towns member who refused to acknowledge his one-time mistress and illegitimate daughter. So Sarah Maud lives every day in the same town as the father of her child who is well known but ignores her. She lives with a constant reminder of a moment of youthful indiscretion and weakness which became a lifetime of regret. 

Sarah Maud is practically the living embodiment of a wailing ghost. She drowns her sorrows in alcohol and takes to her bed to escape sleep. She retreats into Depression like her mother does to her rages and grandmother does to her memories.

The fourth member of their family, Jenner, is also a product of this difficult environment of three older women who are in their own worlds. Since Jenner finds no comfort at home with a melancholic mother, choleric grandmother, and nostalgic great-grandmother, she has often had to rely on herself. This is an upbringing that she takes all too easily to heart.

Jenner does what her antecedents are too afraid or too tied down to: she leaves Swansea. She goes on long nature walks, sometimes for hours and even days on end. On one of those trips, she is accompanied by a small dog called, originally enough, Smalldog. Her trips are a way of distancing herself from the problems at home and give her a chance to get away from it all, even if temporarily. Her connection to nature gives her the emotional connections that her family cannot provide.

As striking as their unhappiness is, the Coombes’ loyalty resonates just as strongly. There are moments where the character's love for each other is clearly visible. Lizzie defends Jenner in front of a nosy Rev. Morgan. Myfanwy and Lizzie hover over a bed ridden Sarah Maud. Myfanwy barely restrains a clenched fist as she hears a hate filled speech directed at her family particularly her mother and daughter. 

The older women realize many of their flaws in parenting led to the moment when Jenner goes missing and vow to be better people, which they take to the letter. This is a family that are experts in supporting each other and driving each other crazy. Anyone who is a mother or a daughter can certainly relate to the “I love you, even if I don't always like you” mindset.

There are other traces of the real world of the 1960’s around them. A group of hippies arrive and take some of the weird labels often given to the women of Ty Merched. In a case of one outsider group bonding with another, they befriend the Coombes to the point that Sarah Maud in particular bonds with one of them, hovering close to a romance.

The status and roles of women have changed, particularly as we see Jenner. Unlike her older relatives, she isn't contented to stay where she is and is more self-assured when it comes to dealing with men. She won't be caught up in a haze of romantic nostalgia, rage, or despair when a relationship ends. She will just move on and forward.

One of the more humorous anecdotes in this book is the Swansea residents' reaction to the historic Moon Landing. A world shaking news event may be important to most people, but not them. It barely gets a mention in the book, just a non sequitur sentence solely to say when this book is specifically set. It has that rural town attitude in which world events sometimes are seen as not as important as the events around them. “Forget that Armstrong fellow. Did you hear what Lizzie Coombe did yesterday?! That's the real scoop!!”

That realistic view of small town life doesn't just play into their interest in local gossip but also in how easily mob mentality takes hold especially when influenced by religious figures. Rev. Morgan, the latest in a long family line of pastors, is particularly influential towards his parishioners. One of his favorite topics is suspicions towards the Coombe Family. 

Morgan creates dissent within his flock and drops hints here and there that the four women are witches and highlights the strange things that happen around them. The appearance of a dead body and the women's history of missing men provide enough fuel for Morgan's accusations. Sure enough he creates enough kindling of hatred and judgment to set all of Wales on fire.

The religious intolerance to witches isn't the only supernatural trait in this book and that's where the poetic mysticism comes in. While the forefront of Red Gifts in The Garden of Stones is in the real world, there is a more metaphysical element in the background, one that is firmly entrenched into the Old World of Welsh Mythology and Pagan practices.

There are a lot of descriptions of mist and grayness making the Reader instinctively feel haunted. The characters, particularly Jenner’s, connection to nature calls to mind Wicca priestesses or early witches who meet in the woods and pay reverence to nature in their spells. This is a world that may be approaching modern times but hasn't lost its sense of the ancient world.

What is particularly compelling about the supernatural events in the book is how anticlimactic most of them are and how they can easily be seen with a more scientific explanation at least by the Reader. Jenner’s dog, Smalldog, could be a lovable spirit guide leading her on her solitary journeys but it could just as easily be a friendly stray dog who found a new human friend. There is a mysterious woman, Blodeuwedd, who appears in and out of the book and who could be a friendly but reclusive neighbor, a ghost, or a character from Welsh Mythology helping the mortals who still believe in her and her kind. 

What about those ghosts Lizzie talks to? We read her conversations with them but are they real? Are they proof that Lizzie and the rest of her family have clairvoyant abilities or are they signs of dementia or an emotional desire to live in the past? What are we to make of some of the events prophetic, synchronicity, or coincidence? Even though we are given some theories, ultimately we are left to make our own conclusions.

One of the strongest links with Paganism is that this is a book which is led entirely by women. The fact that this book has a large cast of women of different ages and has significant ties to paganism is not a coincidence. The four Coombe Women reflect the different stages of the Triple Goddess which is a strong belief in modern Pagan movements and was often told in myths and legends as well.

Jenner is the Maiden, innocent, virginal, adventurous, reckless, naive, emotional, immature at times, and always ready to move ahead and forward in life

Together Sarah Maud and Myfanwy form different aspects of the Mother. Sarah Maud parallels the Nymph side, sensual, earthy, existing for physical pleasures, melancholic, self-centered at times, driven by passion, romance, and emotion.

Myfanwy reflects the Mother, warrior, protector, nurturer, something of a martyr complex, temperamental, combative when necessary, and choleric

Last but not least Lizzie is the embodiment of the Crone, wise, experienced, resigned, nostalgic, family leader, filled with sage advice, guide and has seen it all. They embody and are the Goddess.

Red Gifts in The Garden of Stones is a book that is very meditative and lyrical but at the same time relatable and contemporary. It reflects a poetic dream-like world of spirits, magic, and ancient traditions but also faces a reality of addiction, abandonment, grief, and intergenerational conflicts. It doesn't fit nearly into any one particular category or genre so much that it crosses them and opens a veil between reality and fantasy.