The Moonlit Garden by Corina Bomann: book review

The Moonlit Garden (2013, English version 2016) begins in London in 1920 with 18-year-old violinist Helen Carter about to play Tchaikovky in front of King George V. But an old woman has been stalking her for days.

Fast forward to Berlin, 2011, in Lilly Kaiser’s antique store. A man gives her a violin, saying ‘’It belongs to you.’’ With it is sheet music for the composition A Moonlit Garden. Lilly travels to London to see her childhood friend Ellen Morris, a restorer who knows about violins. While investigating the violin, they take the sheet music to Gabriel Thornton, a musicologist.

Together they trace the violin to two women – Rose and Helen – and Lord Paul Havenden. Unfolding the mystery of the violin takes Lilly to countries far from London or Berlin and in the company of interesting and eligible men.

From country to country, the novel also goes back and forth in time, revealing the history of the violin and the music composition as both past and present connect. The mystery is wrapped up neatly in a 1910 diary, so there is little suspense and intrigue, and it does reveal what happened to Helen on the night of the recital in London in 1920. But what is the connection to Lilly and why does the violin belong to her? And what and where was the garden, the moolit garden, and who composed the tune?

This is more of a love story that a dramatic novel of intrigue. Nevertheless, it is a light and easy read, and entertaining for the most part – more so for the current day (2011) chapters than the flashbacks.

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010), and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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