The Peace Garden [Kindle Edition]

This is the fascinating tale of an uneasy mix between English suburban values and South African apartheid, which builds up to an unexpectedly explosive finale. The unlikely starting-point of plants being stolen from the gardens of a quiet Newcastle street draws you in, as does the deftly-portrayed character of young Natalie Porter, a floating trophy of her parents' ever-shifting diplomatic/journalistic lifestyle, who finds a semblance of permanence staying with her Geordie grandmother - and leaps at the opportunity to emulate her fictional heroine, girl-detective Nancy Drew.
Natalie's sleuthing efforts bring her into contact with an enigmatic black South African academic and his teenage son living at the end of the road. Everyone has them down as the plant thieves; and issues of racial prejudice are sensitively explored both in the English suburban context and, later, in South Africa itself.
Interwoven with the escalating mystery of the missing plants and the past lives of the possible perpetrators - which brings the reader unavoidably face-to-face with the tragic history of apartheid - is the delicately portrayed off-and-on romance that develops between young Natalie and Thabo, the bitter South African teenager now forced by circumstances to live with his father in Britain. Is he a `good guy' or a `bad guy'? Natalie's doubts on this score - and the reader's - persist almost to the last page.
This is a great story, with a compulsively page-turning conclusion, which also gives the reader an inside look at many of the conflicting issues of racial prejudice in its most notorious institutional expression - apartheid South Africa.

To be honest, when I started reading The Peace Garden, I wasn't really expecting much. But very soon, within the first chapter, I drastically changed my tune. Practically every page of this book smacked me around the head and said, "Pay attention! This is important!!" The only other author I've read who has got me so invested in a book is Peter F Hamilton.

I absolutely loved this book. Compulsive and captivating reading. The characters are strong and believable. The story is compelling and wonderfully told. I cannot wait to read more from this author.

The narrator of this compelling story is Natalie, an anxious yet courageous young woman growing up in apartheid South Africa and suburban Tyneside. Obsessed by her fictional heroine, girl-detective Nancy Drew, Natalie becomes curious about the mysteries in the lives of her neighbours in the quiet cul-de-sac. While a tender romance develops between young Natalie and Thabo, we're never sure whether he can be trusted. The reader is seduced by this deceptively gentle start. As we're drawn into the world of the story it becomes a much more threatening, violent and dangerous place. The bitterness of the struggle against apartheid is clearly evoked and we feel the terror of those who lived through that dark time. The poison of racial prejudice is explored in both in the English and South African settings. The beauty of that country is conveyed in rich, vivid writing. The plotting is ingenious. The twists and turns of the story are completely unexpected and deliver us to an explosive denouement.\n \nThe nature of the uneasy alliances in the liberation struggle is conveyed well. These delicate bonds are torn apart as the struggle is won, yet the violence lingers on, echoing down the years and across the world. \n\nThe characters are drawn with humour and sympathy. Fiona Veitch Smith is a far more cheerful version of JM Coetzee. She deals with the same material but with a genre slant and in a more uplifting way.\n A very well crafted book. I look forward to reading the sequel.