The Girls in the Garden: A Novel

Pip is the other main protagonist of The Girls in the Garden. Her real name is Lola, but everyone calls her Pip, short for Pipsqueak, which is what her family called her when she was a baby. Pip turns 12 over the course of the novel. The Prologue includes her taking care of Clare when she is intoxicated, and Chapter 1 begins with a letter by Pip. Jewell uses the first and second person in Pip’s letters to Chris. Pip’s character is developed through both the letters and the limited third-person chapters from her perspective. She has already forgiven her father for burning down their house at the beginning of the novel. For a large portion of the novel, her motivation is to see Chris. Pip adores her father and likes Dylan. She writes to Chris, “I think Dylan is about the nicest boy I’ve ever met. Apart from you, of course! Love you, Dad” (66). Pip wants to reunite her family.

Jewell uses the intimate nature of Pip’s letters to lead the reader astray. Pip believes Leo harmed Grace, setting him up as a red herring. Pip is suspicious of Leo because of his relationship with Tyler, as well as his past with Cecelia and Phoebe. While Pip’s judgment of Leo is inaccurate, she notices Tyler’s animosity immediately. Pip avoids Tyler and Adele’s daughters, preferring to spend time with Rhea and her giant rabbit. After Grace is attacked, Pip acknowledges how much Grace means to her and wants to improve their relationship. In the end, it is only Grace who can convince Pip that Leo didn’t harm Grace. Pip never guessed that Tyler’s animosity would turn into violence.

Grace and Tyler are referred to as “Irish twins.” They look alike, both having curly hair. Grace is the elder and turns 13 on the day of the party. She is a foil to Pip; Grace hasn’t forgiven Chris at the beginning of the novel. Grace also likes Leo much more than Pip does. Unlike Pip, Grace spends much of her time with the Howes family. Grace prefers Adele’s home because she is angry at Chris. However, after she wakes up from her coma, Grace forgives Chris and is happy to see him. The trauma of Tyler’s attack is more troubling than Chris burning down their house. After her coma ends, Grace refuses to go back to Virginia Park and Adele’s house.

Both Grace and Pip are attracted to Dylan, but Grace decides she wants to possess Dylan. Tyler competing with Grace for Dylan’s attention is the main reason why Grace decides to perform oral sex on Dylan. This act is witnessed by Tyler, who insults Grace for being sexually active. Adele’s children also dislike Grace performing this sexual act and help Tyler to attack her. Despite the mixed opinions about Grace’s actions, Pip and Dylan stand by Grace after her coma.

Clare is Pip and Grace’s mother, and Chris’s wife, a stay-at-home mom. While she enjoys, and is good at, caring for children, she’d “never been good with kids. Not in that playing-at-their-level way” (59). This is one of many ways that Clare is a foil to Adele; Adele is good at drawing and doing other activities with children. Adele loves the Virginia Park community; Clare prefers to have more privacy. Clare is a strict parent who will go out and find her children if they stay out past their curfew, while Adele’s parenting style is more relaxed. Adele is dedicated to making healthy meals, while Clare is dedicated to making her small budget last as long as possible. Clare is desperate for a male authority figure in her life. In Chris’s absence, Clare looks to Leo as a male authority figure. While Clare rejects Chris when he is initially released from the hospital, she reaches out to him for help after Grace is attacked.

Clare is frequently depicted as a jealous person. She is jealous of Adele because of her attraction to Leo. Clare is also jealous of Roxy Hancock, a coworker who takes Chris in after he is released from the hospital. Roxy did have a crush on Chris, earning her the nickname “Love-Struck Roxy” in the Wild family. Her jealousy toward Roxy doesn’t stop her from reaching out to Chris and mending things between them. At the end of the novel, Clare apologizes to Adele for her jealousy. Clare is kinder to other women when there is a male authority figure in her life.

The authority figure she chooses to be with at the end of the novel, Christopher Wild, is a documentary filmmaker. He has schizophrenia and, before the beginning of the novel, has an episode that ends in his burning down their house. Chris had a delusion that alien rats were taking over the house and he needed to save the planet from them. After this event, Chris undergoes treatment at a psychiatric hospital. His mental health condition causes Clare to fear Chris for much of the novel and keep him away from his children. However, he sends nice birthday presents for Pip and Grace and respects Clare’s desire for space. These, coupled with the crisis of Grace’s attack, cause Clare to relent and allow Chris to be with his children.

Jewell uses Leo as a red herring—someone the reader can suspect to throw them off the trail of the actual criminal. Several women in the community adore Leo, including Grace and Clare. This is due to Leo’s boyish charm: He “walked [...] like a teenager” (79). He is described “like a teenager” multiple times (127), emphasizing his youthfulness. Pip doesn’t understand why Clare and Grace think Leo is so “nice” and wonderful. She prefers Chris. Leo is a foil to Chris in that he is a neurotypical father figure. Rhea also likes Leo, calling him Adele’s “lovely handsome husband” and rejecting any notion that he could have hurt Grace (322). On the other hand, Pip thinks “Leo had something to do with it” (284). Adele also becomes suspicious of Leo. She thinks he made himself “look thoroughly dodgy” when talking to the police (358). Leo’s relationships with Cecelia and Phoebe also make him suspicious. He dated the former when she was 13 and he was 17. The latter died around the time she dated him. However, Leo is absolved of all guilt. He admits, “Women crying. It’s my weak spot” (373). He allows many women to hold him up as an authority figure and tries to solve their problems.

Leo’s father, who comes to stay with him near the beginning of the novel, is Gordon. He is also called Puppy by the Howes family, as well as “Gordon the octopus” by members of the Virginia Park community (139). Leo took over Gordon’s apartment, making Leo’s children the third generation in the community. Adele thinks of Gordon as a “[h]orrible old pervert” (49). Rhea suspects Gordon was involved with Phoebe’s death and with Grace’s attack. Gordon calls both Adele, and his wife Affie, Mrs. H. Gordon’s wife is an African woman, and he lives in Africa with her. He only temporarily stays with his son while he has surgery on his foot. After his prosthetic foot is healed, he goes back to Africa. Gordon is a static character who physically transforms but emotionally remains generally the same.

Tyler is the antagonist of Girls in the Garden. Pip recognizes Tyler’s animosity toward the Wild sisters almost immediately: “I think she hates us” (65), says Pip. Other members of the community recognize Tyler’s troubled nature as well. Fern says Tyler “is quite disturbing” (340). Tyler’s distinguishing features are her long blond hair and pale eyes. Grace is Tyler’s foil, with her dark, curly hair. Before the Wilds arrived in the Virginia Park community, Tyler and Dylan were best friends. When Grace arrives, she pursues a romantic relationship with Dylan. The competition for Dylan’s attention is another way in which Tyler and Grace are foils of each other. Tyler is jealous of Grace, and Jewell presents jealousy through the eyes. For instance, Adele sees Tyler look Grace “up and down slowly in that awful, forensic way that girls do” (201). Tyler’s anger at Grace is also displaced onto Willow; Tyler pushes Willow off a swing the night she attacks Grace.

Tyler’s hatred of Grace increases over the course of the novel. Early in the novel, Tyler cruelly teases Grace and Pip about their father burning down their house. By the end of the novel, Tyler has progressed to drugging Grace and putting her naked body on display while she is unconscious. This occurs after Tyler witnesses a sexual encounter between Grace and Dylan, as well as witnesses Leo acting fatherly toward Grace. When Jewell uses Tyler’s point of view, she reveals that Tyler doesn’t feel guilty but instead wishes she had done more to harm Grace. After Gordon goes back to Africa, Adele gives Tyler his room, and she essentially moves in with the Howes family. Adele blames Cecelia’s poor parenting for Tyler’s actions, and Tyler isn’t caught or punished for attacking Grace.

Tyler’s mother is Cecelia, who is also called CeCe. Cecelia, like Leo, grew up in the Virginia Park community. Her mother, Marian, was also neglectful and didn’t teach her children to manage their anger. Cecelia, when she is present, leaves “behind her a back-draft of unhappiness” (170). She only appears a few times in the novel. She lies to Tyler, claiming that Leo is her father and kissing Leo in front of Tyler. Cecelia also tells Tyler that Chris burned down the Wild family home and directly encourages Tyler’s cruelty by telling her to make Grace pay for stealing Dylan. It is rumored that Cecelia killed her sister, Phoebe, when Phoebe was 15. There was a love triangle between Cecelia, Phoebe, and Leo that can be compared with the love triangle between Tyler, Grace, and Dylan. However, Cecelia’s guilt is never proven.

Adele and Leo have three daughters: Fern, Willow, and Catkin. Pip describes them as “quite weird.” Adele thinks they aren’t “weird [...] They were magnificent” (31). They play instruments, are homeschooled, and spend their free time in the park with Tyler and Dylan. Fern and Tyler are the same age, 13. Fern dyes part of her hair turquoise at the beginning of the novel and habitually runs a piece of silk “back and forth across her top lip” (261). Willow is younger, behaves “hyperactively,” and demands that the others play tiring games based on imagination. Catkin has “matted locks of hair” which she refuses to cut or brush (330). She steals Gordon’s sleeping pills and gives some to Tyler. Adele is uncertain if her daughters had any more involvement in Grace’s drugging. Overall, the Howes children align themselves with Tyler, against Grace, over the course of the novel.