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    The Summer Garden: A Novel
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    The Summer Garden: A Novel
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    The Summer Garden: A Novel
    Ebook1,181 pages22 hours

    The Summer Garden: A Novel

    By Paullina Simons

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    The Magnificent Conclusion to the Timeless Epic Saga

    Through years of war and devastation, Tatiana and Alexander suffered the worst the twentieth century had to offer. Miraculously reunited in America, they now have a beautiful son, Anthony, the gift of a love strong enough to survive the most terrible upheavals. Though they are still young, the ordeals they endured have changed them—and after living apart in a world laid waste, they must now find a way to live together in postwar America.

    With the Cold War rising, dark forces at work in their adopted country threaten their lives, their family, and their hard-won peace. To regain the happiness they once knew, to wash away the lingering pain of the past, two lovers grown distant must somehow forge a new life … or watch the ghosts of their yesterdays destroy their firstborn son.

    The Summer Garden … their odyssey is just beginning.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateJun 21, 2011
    ISBN9780062087973
    Unavailable
    The Summer Garden: A Novel
    Author

    Paullina Simons

    Paullina Simons was born in Leningrad in 1963. As a child she emigrated to Queens, New York, and attended colleges in Long Island. Then she moved to England and attended Essex University, before returning to America. She lives in New York with her husband and children.

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    Reviews for The Summer Garden

    4/5

    247 ratings25 reviews

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    • 5/5
      My god this series. I can't even and doubt I will ever be able to articulate how this series ravaged me.

      The story and writing is full of emotion -love, hate, jealousy, sadness, anger, joy. Emotions of life.
      The story and writing is full of actions -heroic, cowardliness, moral, immoral, right, wrong, gray. Actions of life.
      Tatiana and Alexander's story is full of what other's have called "mundane details". I call it the details of life, or you know the little and big things that make us who we are. Soooooo mundane ;)
      Look I get it this series is long, beautiful, and ugly. Just like life. It certainly is epic and requires a certain fortitude to get through.
      It's real, it's reality and some don't want that from their books.
      Tatiana and Alexander didn't always do what I wanted them to do but it's their story not mine and frankly the story was better for it.
      I know some other's also complained about the flashbacks saying they were unnecessary. However, I read these books all together one after the other and when I read the flashback where Pasha is told to fear rust, I freaking lost it, cried forever. Could that been left out of the story, yes, but did it add a serious, crazy dimension, YES! All the flashbacks not only brought the ghosts back but gave me a deeper understanding of the characters which made me miss them even more and understand Tatiana even more because of this. (I lost a lot of my anger towards Dasha during the 3rd book flashbacks).
      The characters from this series are going to haunt me for a long time.

      *Sidenotes*
      My god how much research do you think Paullina Simons did for these books! From WWII to Vietnam guns and politics, detail,detail,detail!

      This series must, I demand it, be made to film. Maybe not movie but perhaps a Thorn Birds like format? They can't leave anything out, once again I demand it.

      Whose naming the next goldfish they get Shura? I know I am.
    • 5/5
      Alexander & Tatiana' Barrington's love story continues. War is still a huge part of this family's make-up. Another generation, Anthony is in Vietnam. Gruesome, heartwrenching detailed chapters. I am surprised at how Ms Simons is able to capture the war scene so well. Mesmerizing details. I am glad on how the Trilogy ended, hoping that a new chapter, with the children of these Russian Lover's will continue. There are so many more stories to tell! Loved it!
    • 5/5
      I'm absolutely enamored with this series!In the first two novels in the Bronze Horseman trilogy by Paullina Simons, she throws our two protags, Alexander and Tatiana, into peril from the outset- starting with the siege of Leningrad during WWII on through their eventual escape to America in the late 1940's.When the second book ended, I couldn't see how Simon's could squeeze any more gripping material out of Tatiana and Alexander's lives. But she wonderfully surprised me.As the blurb for The Summer Garden states, their story was only beginning.The Summer Garden starts where the story left off before the epilogue of Tatiana and Alexander(Or The Bridge to Holy Cross for any Brits and Ozzies out there!). Though Alexander has joined Tatiana and their son Anthony in the US, part of him is still in the gulag Tatiana rescued him from, unable to move forward and unable to allow himself to live after seeing, and causing, so much death and destruction.But Tatiana is a fierce one and doesn't give up so easily. They travel all over the US trying to find a place they can call home, and along the way, bring him to a place of healing. I found this one to be much more sexual then the first two- almost erotic really- but that too had it's purpose, a metaphor if you will, for the spiritual melding their marriage so desperately needed after their time apart.They end up in Arizona, on a parcel of land Tatiana bought with the money Alexander's mother horded away after his father zealously gave up their US citizenship and hauled his family to the Soviet Union during the pre-war years.You would think that after all they had been through- sieges, starvation and the total destruction of their families and homeland- that all the pain was behind them and that nothing could break them. But you would be wrong. They find that peaceful life can be way may more dangerous with it's insidious fingers plucking at them until they become something they never thought they would.This is why I fell for this book in a much deeper way then even the first two. I have found in life that the big things, like death and pain, are far easier to survive then the little things that can eat you away before you even realize it. Like the slow dripping of water that erodes a massive stone, we are often unaware of the things that constantly hit us until all that we thought we were is almost totally gone. Although the big things define us and show us what we can be, it's the little things and how we deal with them, that show us what we are. And so it was for Tatiana and Alexander.We follow them through the years, through bad decisions and successes, births and deaths, through children growing up and themselves growing apart, until the very end when we see them with their family, white haired but still in as much love as the day when Alexander crossed the street to meet a skinny blond hair girl innocently eating ice cream, waiting for her life to begin.Alexander is the ultimate Alpha hero. Strong, brooding, flawed and intense. Despite outward appearances, Tatiana has a core of steel and an insight into human nature that matches him pound for pound. The little tidbits of Tatiana's former life that Simons throws into The Summer Garden, only reinforces that fact, and I for one loved that part of the story telling, though I can imagine some people would have found it extraneous.Tatiana and Alexander's love was so deep, so intense, that it became their greatest strength as well as their greatest weakness and it became the strength of these novels as well.Although I know these books are not for everyone- their huge, sweeping and daunting at times- but so worth the time invested. My wish is for everyone to find a book that moves them as much as these have with me!
    • 5/5
      I love Paullina Simmons's work. Her prose is some of the best around and she really knows how to capture a moment or feeling in prose. The Summer Garden is a perfect reflection of her writing prowess. Of course, I was already fully involved with the characters given that I had already read the two previous books in the series. In fact, The Bronze Horseman will forever be one of my most favorite historical fiction novels. The conflicts in this book were so different than the first two. Yet, it felt so right for the 3rd installment. I breezed through this book in no time. I loved it!

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      The conclusion to the story of Shura and Tatiana. Still lots of story to tell, but again, it has a different flavour than the previous two books as they deal with their time living together.
    • 5/5
      Don't think any review of this book, in fact the whole trilogy, can do it enough justice. Beyond words-ly Fabulous. Doubt any book I pick up will compare. May just have to re-read the whole epic story again v soon.
    • 5/5
      I have thoroughly enjoyed this trilogy. Read this final book so slow just so I could make it last. Read this one definately!! It's got it all--drama, historical setting,Leningrad, Berlin, Ellis Island, love, love, and more love. And I must say that her combat sequences are absolutely gut-wrenching and hard to read at a slow rate. I was totally immersed.
    • 4/5
      This third installment of the trilogy is much better than the second, Tatiana and Alexander, but is still stuffed with filler. Our two lovers have escaped the Soviet Union and become American citizens, but are haunted by what they've lived through. Simons gives them a barrage of troubling issues to deal with - trust, post-traumatic stress, gender roles - but it doesn't feel like much happens until we reach the Vietnam War. Wars clearly provide Simons the structure her novels need - which is probably why Tatiana and Alexander suffered so much. With all its faults, The Summer Garden and its two predecessors are still good reads because the romance between Tatiana and Alexander is believable. The ending is quite sappy, but it provides closure and you can't help but like it.
    • 3/5
      This is the third book of the trilogy (and the weakest one of the three, in my view) - the first 2 being "The Bronze Horseman" and "Tatiana and Alexander". The plot was the main attraction for me in the first two books, the writing being so-so, but in "The Summer Garden" both the plot and the writing seems to be lacking, except for the last one quarter of the book where the plot picks up a bit. Still, all in all, this 3 book saga of Tatiana and Alexander is quite inspirational, and fantastic at times.
    • 1/5
      I actually didn't finish this book, and for me, that's very telling. Because I generally enjoyed "The Bronze Horseman," I requested this ER book. Before I received it, I read the second book in the trilogy, "Tatiana and Alexander." Overall, I think the whole series deteriorated as it went along. The story line in the first two, was pretty enjoyable and interesting, but as far as I can tell (320 pages in), the storyline of this third book is mainly about the couple traveling around the country, fighting, and passionately making up. After a while, it got old, repetitive, and uninteresting.
    • 2/5
      I received this book as an early reviewer, but have not read the first two books of the trilogy. In spite of that, this book is impossibly long and verbose. Being of a certain age myself, I found pretty glaring errors in time and place. RV's and double-wides...really? A quick lap around Google would have shored up those sloppy blatancies. I love a good story and there are elements of that in this volume, but this was slogging.
    • 3/5
      I loved "The Bronze Horseman" and "Tatiana and Alexander". Sure, there were some truly quaint turns of phrasing that I might not have tolerated in another book, but in these two books they did not take away from my enjoyment. They had heart and hope and love and I enjoyed them hugely.The Summer Garden is not a worthy successor to those two grand adventures. In this third book, Tatiana and Alexander are in America, living their post-war life with their son and it seems as if coming to America changed the two of them - and not for the good. They don’t talk to one another. Alexander broods and Tatiana hides things from him. There was little sign of love between them. There is plenty of physical love – endless bunny-rabbit sex that gets old after not very long and interminable quarreling between the two of them over their future, Tatiana’s career as a nurse, his job, his unhappiness over the hours she works, the kind of house they will live in – everything. By the 490 page mark there was so much anger and unpleasantness that I could hardly recognize Alexander any more and Tatiana was just way too ‘good’ to be bearable any longer. I can only think that Simons got a three-book deal from her publisher and wrote this mess to fulfill that contract. She should have stopped at two.I’ve always thought that in works of Historical Fiction it is especially important not to have things that are out of time or place. For me they stick out like two heads on a chicken. Simons is guilty of several instances of not getting parts of her time period right. The first one happened almost immediately when she has the Barringtons tooling around in an RV. Really? It’s 1946. The Winnebago does not come into being until the 1960s. When they finally settle down in their ‘double-wide mobile home’ while the Korean War is raging (another thing that I kind of thought was out of place and time) the Barringtons have air-conditioning and a hot tub. And there are lots and lots of other things that were just very bothersome to me. But most especially, I think that the biggest problem with this book is that is missing a very important major character – World War Two – and without the war this book has no backbone and no reason for being. It’s just a big sexy bore.It was a huge disappointment and I could not finish it. I will do my best to forget every word I read so that I can go on re-reading the first two books in the series.
    • 5/5
      I absolutely loved this book. It follows in the footsteps of the first two of the series, The Bronze Horseman and Tatiana and Alexander. I loved seeing where Tatiana and Alexander were and what was going on with them. I love the authors style of writing and couldn't put it down!
    • 5/5
      This book is the last in a series which follows the lives of Tatiana Metanov and Alexander Barrington as they battle through World War II Leningrad in an epic tale of love and suffering. If you are unfamiliar with this series than you want to pick up The Bronze Horseman first and then Tatiana and Alexander before you start this book. I don't think it's a necessity but you will definately appreciate the characters much more if you have started from the beginning. This book is written in a series of mini books starting where the second book left off and follows Tatiana and Alexander's lives as they move across the States and try to establish their post war relationship. This is a fairly lengthy book that you should go into knowing that once you finish one of the mini books you certainly can take a break for awhile or read on like I did enjoying each part as a different experience with these wonderful characters.There are some flashback sections from Tatiana's past with her family in Luga which are interwoven throughout the book and seem a little out of place at first. I thought that the author did manage to pull them into the story as a whole at the end of the book and I enjoyed this glimpse of Tatiana's past. I'll have to say that I truly loved this book and I was completely satisfied with the conclusion to this series. At the end of the book Tatiana says "Do you know what a happy ending is to a Russian? When the hero, at the end of his own story, finally learns the reason for his suffering." If you have ever read any Russian literature this will really hit home. I highly recommend this book as well as all the others in this series to anyone who loves Russian history or historical fiction. Some books are read and forgotten but this one will stick with me forever.
    • 4/5
      *I received this book through LibraryThing Early Reviewers.*The epic love story of Tatiana and Alexander continue in The Summer Garden, the third installment in Paullina Simons' trilogy. The Summer Garden tells the tale of the life built by the couple after the Second World War and the challenges faced in post-war America. Paullina Simons excels at creating a vivid portrait of life in the United States after WWII, just as she did in portraying the Soviet Union and Europe. While not as gripping and enthralling as the previous two novels, The Summer Garden was an excellent read and I was happy to continue Tatiana and Alexander's story and see how their lives turned out.
    • 2/5
      Not having read the first two books of this trilogy, I did have some problems getting into the story of Tatiana and Alexander. The Summer Garden begins after the second World War and tells the story of Tatiana and Alexander’s new life in America with their young son. The book takes us through their lives and into the couple’s elder years. I wish I could say that I enjoyed this book, but I found it overly long with an unsatisfying ending. I feel people who are fans of the entire series will probably find it more enjoyable.
    • 3/5
      Received as part of the Early Review(4/2011 batch) on LibraryThing:I’ve thought long and hard on how to write this review. First off, I did not read the other two books in the series, this is my first encounter with any book by Paullina Simons. Perhaps if I had read the three books in the series, I would have enjoyed this book a bit more, but as a standalone piece of work, my answer would have to be in the negative.So first things first, let’s talk about some details and plot summary of the book. The book is set in the US at the end of the Second World War. Tatiana and Alexander are immigrants from Russia, having survived much in the time of war and revolution, having lost so many family members to both. The book starts out with them having a young child in tow and exploring the US. The book takes you on a long tale that ends in the 2000’s as Tatiana and Alexander are in their twilight years with grown children and grandchildren.This book left me feeling exhausted and worn out. Tatiana and Alexander had been through so much, and this was indeed an epic tale of a mess load of pain and, in the end growth. I enjoyed the characters of Tatiana and her young son Anthony. Both were noble, and willing to sacrifice themselves for those that they loved and managed to find happiness, and I kept reading to know more about them. Unfortunately, I could not say the same about Alexander. I spent ¾ of the book despising this character, as he was an emotionally and physically abusive selfish womanizer who cared only about what Tatiana “should” be. I could find no real sympathy for this character, even though it seems that the author wanted you to like him. I only warmed up to him a bit in the Vietnam scenes, and then only a bit, it never really got any better for me. I think in this instance it may have better to have read the other books so that I had an emotional attachment to this character before I read this book. This book was overly long when it didn’t really need to be, a lot of meandering occurred. There were quite a few sex scenes that could have been left out as well. I will say that her characters drew out strong emotions in me, and I’m sure others will find this as well. I found the book to be a bit nihilistic, which depresses me to no end, but others find refreshing. I am hoping that I will like the book more when I read the other books, but as a solo book for me, it’s not my favourite cup of tea.
    • 3/5
      I too had no idea this was the third book in a series and was quite overwhelmed at the thought of reading the last book first! Not to mention the fact that it is so long and the type is tiny. That being said, it is a great novel and I now must have books one and two. I think Paullina Simons is a very talented writer but we really could have used a lot less to get the idea across.
    • 3/5
      Good ending to the trilogy but really could have done with at least 100 pages less. Would make a great long summer beach read. Am hoping the finished edition comes out with a little bigger print. Simons is a great writer and look forward to her next book.
    • 3/5
      When I first started this book I was confused by all the references to the past adventures of these two. I didn't realize that this was the third book of a trilogy until checking in LT reviews and had to go back and look at the original LT give a way posting. Nope, no mention that this was the third in a trilogy. I would probably not have requested it had I realized, not having read the first two. Moving on to this book. The writing was good, and there was a lot of it. I think this book would have been better with a bit of editing. This couple really love each other, and you can tell because they have sex. Alot of sex. Graphically descripted, detailed sex. I understood what the auther was trying to convey (I think), but after awhile it was a bit much. Overall, not a bad story, I enjoyed their life in AZ. I don't really feel compelled to go back and read the first two books though.
    • 5/5
      Book three in the Bronze Horseman trilogy. Once I started this third book I was hooked. Paullina Simons captures the familial emotional essence of war so closely you feel part of the Alexander and Tatiana story. This is such an emotional read if you just want a love story to read. This trilogy, however, is so much more. The final chapter of the trilogy is exceptionally wonderful. Savor and enjoy!
    • 5/5
      This was one of the best, and most emotional stories I have ever experienced! The length of the book was a little daunting, but I flew through it with ease, not wanting to put it down! The settings were described so well, I could see them and feel them clearly. I felt as if I were standing by the characters as the story moved right along. The characters were so lovable and I grew very attached to them. Each with their unique and strong personalities, flaws and all. I have to say, I can't remember the last time I read such an emotionally gripping story. I found myself feeling everything that Tatiana and Alexander were feeling, and crying or laughing or loving right along with them. I am now dying to read the first two books in the trilogy. Way to go!
    • 1/5
      As the grown-up version of a middle school bookworm who chose library books solely because of their length, I was initially pleased to have a 742-page historical saga to immerse myself in. Images of Gone With the Wind, The Winds of War, anything by Michener came to mind.Those images dissipated pretty quickly. For those who read the first two novels in this series (I didn't, but pulled up synopses to bring myself up to speed), reading about the later stages of Tatiania's and Alexander's relationship--postwar to Vietnam and beyond--may be immensely satisfying. Closure and all. But, diving into this one, I found nothing to make me really, really like either main character. For folks who care about language and adult content, there was more than I cared to read.With all that said, Paullina Simons writes well. Her prose is very spare--action and conversation propel the story forward. None of those big, beefy paragraph-long Margaret Mitchell descriptions or chapters full of exposition. Wouldn't recommend this one unless you're a huge fan of its predecessors.
    • 4/5
      While I LOVED the first two books in this trilogy, I found the Summer Garden to be disappointing. Don't get me wrong, some parts were excellent. But a decent amount of it was rather drawn out. Particularly the last 100 pages or so. I would recommend this book to fans of the first two in the series, as it does continue the story of Alexander & Tatiana. It's just not as good as the previous two.
    • 2/5
      First there was The Bronze Horseman, and then there was The Bridge to Holy Cross. At that point, most fans of Alexander and Tatiana’s incredible love story might have thought Simons would leave well alone. Obviously not Simons. The Summer Garden is the story of what happened after Tatiana rescued Alexander from behind the Iron Curtain, and their efforts to put their past horrors behind them, and build a new life in America. While reading vast swathes of this book, I realised I didn’t want to know any more details, many of which were unpleasant and utterly unedifying. The good news is that there can be no possibility of a fourth story, unless Simons decides to branch out into the kids’ lives. Please God, no.