The twenty stories from The Rose Garden previously appeared in The New Yorker, where the Irish Maeve Brennan (1917–1993) was part of the permanent staff from 1949. They are set against the backdrop of the stifling fifties. The most beautiful of these in Herbert’s Retreat: a luxurious residential area north of New York, only accessible via one narrow road through the woods. “The road is off limits to outsiders, in keeping with the nature of the Retreat, which is formal, exclusive and full of iron rules. But the most important thing is that only the right people live there.’
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