Can Soft People & Places Soften Hearts?

Sometimes you just need to change the soil and what's in you will grow.

San Salvatore promises ‘Wisteria and Sunshine’ to those in desperate need of respite. On a very wet, very grey February London morning, an advert in the The Times finds Mrs Wilkins and Mrs Arbuthnot desperate for such an escape. Elizabeth von Arnim’s book The Enchanted April is a delicate look into the frailties of human nature, the subtle complexities of relationship and how love is the soil in which the impossible can flourish.

We join the journey of four women, all in need of inner healing. For one reason or another they find they’re locked in on themselves, stuck, hardened to their life’s lot. Unhappy marriages, misalignment of faith and belief with a husband, grief over a lost child, sorrow for a life long gone and old friends with it, the trappings of fame and beauty and the desire for authentic connection. I have felt seen in these characters over the years. It’s also very funny!

Can a change of scenery change a heart? Can the presence of a safe, soft person who sees hope for others draw the floundering out of the dark clouds of disappointment?

I re-read this beautiful fiction every April and each time draw new insights from it. It’s not that the book has changed but that I grow and see with new eyes as the years pass.

Have you read this book? If you’d like to read along this month I’d love to start a book club chat so we can relish it together. I’ll do a podcast at the end of the month sharing my takeaways too.

UK readers - Purchase your copy HERE