The Greenhouse

By: Audur Ava Olafsdottir, Brian FitzGibbon - translator

Narrated by: Luke Daniels

Young Lobbi was preparing to leave his childhood home, his autistic brother, his octogenarian father, and the familiar landscape of mossy lava fields for an unknown future. Soon before his departure, he received an awful phone call: His mother was in a car accident. She used her dying words to offer calm advice to her son, urging him to continue their shared work in the greenhouse tending to the rare Rosa candida.

Prior to his mother’s death, in that very same greenhouse, Lobbi made love to Anna, a friend of a friend, and just as he readies his departure he learns that in their brief night together they conceived a child. He is still reeling from this chain of events when he arrives at his new job, reinstating the rare eight-petaled rose in the majestic forgotten garden of an ancient European monastery. In focusing his energy cultivating the rarest rose, he also learns to cultivate love, with the help of a film buff monk and his newborn daughter, Flora Sol.

©2012 Audur Ava Olafsdottir (P)2012 Brilliance Audio, Inc.

ok

very slow moving story, not very deep, but I did listen to the whole thing

Very slow story

This story never grabbed me and by the time I finished it, I felt the ending should have been expanded on because it definitely left me hanging.

I felt the narrator, Luke Daniels, lacked any enthusiasm and I wondered if that was intentional or just the narrator's mood as he read it. Perhaps the main character was supposed to be autistic like his brother too and that's why the narrator read the story in that way.

Too slow-paced. I did not like the movie themed interaction with the monk; I did not like how we couldn't get to know the mother of his child, Anna; I did not like how we didn't get to know his father better, etc. Lack of character development throughout.