Love Affair in the Garden of Milton

Book excerpt: Love Affair in the Garden of Milton interweaves the private story of a marriage coming apart with readings of John Milton’s poetry and prose. Connected essays chart the chaos of loss and the discovery of how a writer can inhabit our emotional as well as our intellectual selves. Inflected by the principles of mindfulness, Susannah B. Mintz’s memoir explores how we reconstruct ourselves and find our way back to meaning in the aftermath of trauma. Formally inventive and engaging dynamic philosophical ideas, Love Affair in the Garden of Milton raises questions of forgiveness, desire, identity, grief, and the counterintuitive relevance of literary tradition. This lyric memoir offers readers a sense of partnership, with the author and Milton as companionable guides through the wilds of love and loss.