The Savage Garden (44 page)

    Discuss what elements of
The Savage Garden
carry echoes of William Shakespeare's writing and the themes, language and characters of his plays. Does the novel read almost like a play script, with its extensive use of dialogue?

    An undercurrent of licentious sexual behavior runs throughout the novel. Discuss how the biblical garden as metaphor permeates the book.

    History, specifically the history of World War II and other major battles, has a strong presence throughout the novel. Discuss how including these conflicts affects the novel as a whole. What was the state of the country, culture and people of Italy in 1958, still only recently removed from the destructive end of World War II? Could the author have set
The Savage Garden
in another time period without losing the effect and world he creates? Writing from a distance of nearly fifty years, how does Mills establish a sense of verisimilitude that his characters are operating and interacting in a specific historical era?

    Toward the end of Francesca's letter to Adam she writes, "I meant what I said to you just before we sat down to dinner at the party. I asked you then to remember my words. Do you? I hope so, because they are as true as any I have ever spoken." What exactly were Francesca's words?

    The author touches upon the theme of closure numerous times throughout the novel—from a three-hundred-year-old murder to the death of Emilio to Adam's father's infidelity. How important is closure within the frame of the book's world? Were you satisfied with the novel's ending? Why or why not?

    Discuss Professor Leonard's possible various motivations for sending Adam to Italy, besides those he openly states. Do you feel the professor knows he's sending Adam into what amounts to a viper's nest? Does the professor see Adam as a surrogate son?

    Do you feel there is a deeper meaning behind the revelation that Emilio is Professor Leonard's son? Or do you think perhaps the author has included this as simply another issue for the characters to overcome?

    Mark Mills is a screenwriter whose first novel,
Amagansett,
was published in a dozen countries and received the British Crime Writers' Association John Creasy Memorial Dagger Award. A graduate of Cambridge, he lives in Oxford with his wife and two children.