I am reading a wonderful little biographical essay of Anthony Burgess' now (http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/13610482/) and thought this would be a good complement to it. I've registered and released "Under the Garden" in bookcrossing before. Here's what I had to say then:

Greene was a dreamer and a gatherer of dreams for inspiration. His last book was A World of My Own: A Dream Diary. In "Under the Garden," middle-aged Wilditch returns to his childhood home to understand a dream that, with adventuring boys' fiction, was to shape his life. One of the tragedies of Wilditch's childhood fancy, it seems to me, was that it failed to contain a female voice. He understands this in recalling his mother's concern about a story he created for a school publication based on the dream. "Under the Garden" leaves poor Wilditch contemplating his dream, knowing that he will soon die of cancer. This strange nod to Jung works at several levels, inviting the reader into the unconscious world of the dream.

Journal entry from 2004: http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/1908211/

I found this copy of this little Penguin 60s edition of 20 years ago and decided to read it again after the opening paragraphs. Graham Greene's wonderful sympathy for the character William Wilditch caught me. The first section of the story was very compelling but the second "dream" section was more difficult to follow. I did not like Greene's seedy dream characters. Still, I soldiered on. Finishing the story this morning, I couldn't help thinking of the Divine Comedy as a contrasting tale. In the Divine Comedy, Dante's courtly love for Beatrice leads him from Hell, through Purgatory and finally to Heaven. Wilditch's experience of inspiration is much different. And as in my first reading, I see that much of his problem seems bound to his relationship to women, primarily seen in his memory of his mother, who doesn't seem very sympathetic to him. A Fabian, she is disturbed by the religious tone of a story he's written for school based on his dream. Wilditch has an illegitimate daughter who seems even more remote and he does not seem to have feeling for his daughter's mother at all. Was his adult life, grounded in wanderlust, merely motivated by the wild childhood itch for the pornographically beautiful Miss Ramsgate who is the daughter of the dream characters Jarvitt and Maria? I was glad that Greene's storytelling leaves the question open. Again, in the final section, I was drawn back to sympathy for Wilditch and I left the story pondering. I'm glad I took time for another read, though I resisted the narrative more than once, putting the book down several times. Interestingly, "Under the Garden" is structured like a movie that was important to me as a child, "The Wizard of Oz." The 1939 move classic played every Thanksgiving on television back in the simpler days of my early years and was also told in three sections. The first black and white sequence features Dorothy's childhood in Kansas. In the second color section, she is in the dreamy world of OZ. Finally she returns to Kansas, to black and white film, and recognizes that some of the characters she met in OZ are her real life friends. (Or I always recognized that.) What, I wonder, have my own under the garden or over the rainbow experiences been? Finishing this book I can't think of any. I do know that my father was particularly charmed that Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion became imaginary friends for me. He told me that I used to play with them often. I only know this through his recollection. This was when I was a toddler, before I remember. I do remember the ritual of watching the film every year. As far as father figures are concerned, poor Wilditch doesn't share any memories of a father in this story. I wonder in retrospect if that's why Jarvitt of the dream was so important to him.

This book could be considered spooky. Boooo! Out it goes for Halloween.

The package arrived safely today - thanks so much! I do love having these Penguin 60s on hand for geocache releases.

I enjoyed this story very much, despite its rather grim, life-altering - or life-ending - setup. The ways in which Wilditch's memories of his childhood differ from those of his brother and parents reminded me of family chats in which we'd all share different memories of the same events; the poignancy of the visit to a childhood home and finding some things too familiar and others too alien; even the rediscovery of a youthful literary effort (there are a couple of mine still in my folks' custody {wry grin})... it all resonated. And the increasingly bizarre dream definitely had a "Through the Looking-Glass" vibe, though whether it caused Wilditch's unsettled lifestyle or was a symptom of characteristics that would have led to that anyway is unclear.

Very evocative story; thanks for sharing this one!

I left this book in the Gage Town Forest multi-cache at around 2:30 or so on this warm fall day. Hope the finder enjoys it!

*** Released as part of the 2015 Keep Them Moving release challenge. ***

*** Released as part of the 2015 The 'The' release challenge. ***