I had never heard of Edward Hower before I picked up this book in the libarary. I have to admit my interest was sparked by the writers who rave about him on the dustjacket. I figure that when writers like Robert Stone, Diane Johnson, Paul West, and William Kennedy say good things about Hower, he was worth reading. I wasn't disappointed.

Set in Sri Lanka in 1998, A Garden of Demons is a coming of age story of an 11 year old girl named Lila Gunasekera, born to a Sri Lankan father and an American mother. Her Uncle Richard has just arrived from the U.S., frustrated in his effort to find a job there. He arrives to find Lila's family trying to find support from the Sri Lankan government to turn their vast plantation into a nature preserve. Never mind that a civil war is being fought betweenn the government and the vicious terrorist forces of the Tamil Tigers less than a hundred miles away. As the war inches closer, the Gunasekeras will have to decide whether their ideals are worth dying for and Lila will have to leave her childhood behind.

This was a great book. You would think with the age of the main character that this novel would classify as young adult literature. It doesn't. Instead, the fact that it comes from Lila's perspective just adds to the dreamlike fantasy that the family seems to inhabit. Sri Lanka is a land of spirits, good and evil, that move across the land, influencing the lives of humans, much as the Greek gods do in the works of Homer. It doesn't quite reach that state of "magical realism" but seems to be just "realism". Lila is a great character that really grows on you. There is no hint of the cutesy froo froo that could inherently damage such a young character. This was a great novel. I already said that. I am really glad I picked it up. Unfortunately, from the lack of any reviews of this work, not many people seem to be aware of it on this site. Hunt it down.

I was eager to read a novel about Helena Blavatsky and Henry Olcott, the now-revered founders of Theosophy, but thought the author did better with Henry Olcott (Ben in the novel) than with Blavatsky (Irinia in the novel). Too often, Irinia is the comic butt of Ben's good sense and serious spiritual quest. I liked the descriptions of India; I loved the supposed excerpts from Blavatsky's tales and Olcott's journals; but SHADOWS & ELEPHANTS makes Blavatsky/Irinia almost wholly a neurotic fraud, giving no explanation of the spiritual power she exerts over followers even today.