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I've just finished reading The Winter Vault, the second novel by Anne Michaels. Her first, Fugitive Pieces, is my favourite book (and I don't say that lightly; I read a lot, I've given it a lot of thought, and I'm yet to find anything I've loved as much).

An interview with the author, from the Guardian, is here.

"- At the cemetery, said Jean, nearby to Elisabeth's grave
was the grave of another child. There someone had left a magnificent garden of
plastic flowers. Ferns grew lush out of a thick square of florists' foam, and in
the foliage stood two painted china dogs. Each plastic flower had been carefully
chosen; roses, hyacinths, tulips, lily of the valley. There was love in each
moulded crevice of leaves and petals.

I remember when I was young looking at plastic flowers
in a shop. I heard someone say, 'They're not real' and I couldn't understand
what they meant - I was holding one in my hand, of course they were
real.

The child's garden rested on its thick green foam
above the cold spring ground. It was as real as anything. A child would have
thought that garden beautiful.

Everything that has been made from love is
alive."

Anne Michaels:

What am I trying to say in The Winter Vault? Among other things, that it is not enough not to do harm; one must also do good. That regret and shame are not the end of the story; they are its middle.

This plastic garden, near the end of the book, represents a kind of redemption; a coming to terms with much that has been discussed; a laying to rest. Any consolation is hard won; the redemption is of a very subtle nature. But I would not publish anything that did not have, at its heart, what I feel to be an unassailable argument for hope.