DESTINED to become a classic, Into the Garden with Charles by Clyde Phillip Wachsberger (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) is a jewel of a memoir. The author’s charming watercolors accompany this tale of a lonely New Yorker with an unsuspected botanical bent who abandons the pursuit of love and pours his heart into a garden—one that becomes “as demanding andmanipulative as a jealous lover, and as highmaintenance.” That adoring care prepares him for the entrance into his life of an elegant Southerner named Charles. The two men blossom in each other’s company, reviving that ancient (but forever fertile) metaphor of a garden of love. N

Next: 'The Newlyweds' by Nell Freudenberger

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