The Garden Angel - Mindy Friddle
by Zia ~ February 14th, 2005. Filed under: Books.How can you not like a heroine you first meet as she wanders upstairs to an attic bathroom wearing her grandmother’s wedding nightgown to slather mayonnaise on her face and strew rose petals in her bath?
Cutter lives in a crumbling Florida mansion with her sister Ginnie. Her grandmother has just died, and Ginnie and their brother are trying to sell the house–and Cutter is waging war against the realtor: she dribbles honey for ants, leaves scads of hair she is braiding Victorian style in tangled masses on the coffee table. Meanwhile, she waittresses and writes obits in the vain hope of buying her siblings out.
Her sister is having an affair with her married English professor, whose wife Elizabeth suffers severe agoraphobia and stress. When Elizabeth shows up at the house after an anonymous phone call tips her off about the affair, Cutter and Elizabeth forge an odd relationship–eventually culminating in a way for Cutter to keep the house and Elizabeth to assert her own independence.
Sly and offbeat, fun for a rainy sort of day.