Rough Work- Apologia

-Significance of Helen Humphreys Novel

1. occurs around the time of WWII

• shows what women did in the workforce
• fix up gardens around estate showing women doing their part in the war as potatoes were to be grown and sent off to the men

2. love stories intertwined into the book

• shows the difficulty of women who's husbands have gone off to war
• struggle to accept that a husband MIA(missing in action) may never be coming home

3. Gwen Davis' life story

• obsession with the Genus Rosa- pretending that it was a man's weight while it lay on top of her indicating that she is very lonely
• her secret love for officer Raley (first man that she has ever loved, but he does not feel the same way for her- breaks her heart, give up on love?)
• life is full of disappointment
• mother never showed loved towards her
• only friend that she has ever made dies slowly in her presence

4. book is autobiographical to Helen's Life

• Humphreys' parents lived through the Blitz(WWII)
• lost Royal Air Force Pilot in the book resembles Helen's grandfather who was never seen or found after 1941
• other grandfather found a lost garden at an estate he was living at- brought it back to fullness just like Gwen did in the story
• estate in the book is named after a house that Helen's father used to live in

5. significance of the story line

• "I thought the whole idea of something that was lost, briefly found and than lost again was a good metaphor. That's how the book started"
• "All of us have some sort of lost garden"

(ALSO ROUGH WORK)-----Significance of the novel by Humphreys is that it is something that many people may be able to relate to with the war going on in Iraq now, husbands going away and never coming back. The idea of something lost, found and lost again is also something that many can relate to. The book is made interesting as it is based on the lives of Helen's family members, so even though the book is fiction it does have truth to it. The love story intertwined into the book is something that a lot of people in the world are hoping to experience, we see Gwen Davis falling in love but we also see the down fall of this as she gets rejected. This helps us feel for the character of Gwen, it makes us feel sorry for her because she has never been loved before, Raley was her only hope but she was shut down by him, therefore readers will always wonder if she will find love again. Seeing friends in tough spots and being helpless towards them is something that many can relate to also, as Gwen tries desperately to help her friend Jane, but she is struggling with the death of her husband and the fact that he will never be coming back to her. All in all this book tugs on your feelings and many would be able to relate to aspects of the story which makes this novel very significant and great attention should be paid to this novel.

Why attention should be paid to Helen Humphreys

• very interested in writing books
• first book was written and published in 1997 when she was 36 years old
• she has to research quite a lot for writing the book "The Lost Garden" as she knew little to nothing about flowers
• Genus Rosa metioned in the book is a real encyclopedia about flowers, only 2 copies are available in Canadian libraries and Humphreys' was able to get a hold of one- Helen, like Gwen Davis in the book, would also lay under the Genus Rosa every night amidst the process of writing the book, it was a ritual that she had
• used to be a poetry writer but wanted to evolve into something different because she though that as a reader "you can enter a book and live inside there but in a poetry, there's no place for you"(Humphreys)
• some day she would like to go back to poetry
• she is a versatile writer being able to jump for poetry into writing and someday back into poetry
• capable of writing very interesting novels that are based on real life experiences
• as of right now, she is an author that is not known very well, as I searched her on google and found very little information about her
• she should be known as she is able to write fiction stories (The Lost Garden) that take you back to a real era or time period like WWII and incorperate real stories of her families lives into the book which makes the book much more interesting to know that some aspects of it actually occured in this life time

(ALSO VERY ROUGH WORK)----More attention should be paid to this Canadian author as she has very interesting things to say, she puts extensive research into her novels and even tries to get into her character's roles by doing the same ritual as Gwen Davis does in the book, by placing the actual copy of the Genus Rosa on her stomach each night while in the process of writing the book. She also incorporates her families life stories into the book which make it a very interesting read. Knowing that she is a versatile writer, being able to go back and forth from writing, to poetry, also make Helen Humphreys a very significant Canadian author. I believe that many more people should read the works of Helen and that many more people also need to be informed of her work. This is because when I searched her name online, she was almost non-existent, which is something you would never find with an American author.