The Good-Hearted Gardeners (Spinifexpress) is eco-fiction with a twist. Can the headlong rush to extinction be halted? Will the planet and its inhabitants be saved? Suniti Namjoshi is an internationally acclaimed author, a writer of fables, poetry, satirical fiction, and children’s fiction. Born in Mumbai in 1941, she lives in a small seaside village in the south-west of England with writer Gillian Hansombe.
What do you do when you fall in love with your next-door neighbour? You peer at each other through a hole in the fence and eventually climb over. Sybil is a member of The Good-Hearted Gardeners, a Society for Well-Meaning Efforts for the Betterment of Language and the Salvation of the Planet, which her lover, Demo, is allowed to join. It’s funded by MI5, who ask them to monetise and weaponise the English language. Soon afterwards they discover that English is even more widespread than anyone had thought. Even the birds and the fish, the cows and the kangaroos can speak it, when they choose. The Good-Hearted Gardeners set about trying to talk to anyone—crows, magpies, robins, goldfish, cows, horses, rats, mice—who will talk to them.
The book is described as a comedic allegory for our future.
