Garden of Monsters

For this book, you will need a spreadsheet, a long memory, and the ability to quickly get used to many similar-sounding names. Overall, the concept of the book is not a bad idea, a changing landscape in late twentieth Century Tuscany, Italy. Family codes, morals, and political allegiances all changing as those at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder start moving on up, and those who families by virtue of blood stood at the top not wanting others coming up. The story follows fifteen-year-old Annamaria, who not only struggles with her name, which she dislikes but struggles to find her place in society. She encounters artist Niki de Saint Phalle, who is creating an outdoor sculpture garden near where her family lives and which provides an escape for Annamaria.

This book makes so many digressions into the past, into other families, and the like that it is difficult from one chapter to the next whose story we are on. It might have been better just to read the chapters of each character instead of reading it in normal order.