Book Review: The Care and Handling of Roses with Thorns by Margaret Dilloway

[othercat]

The Care and Handling of Roses with Thorns is Dilloway’s second novel and shares some of the same themes as her previous novel, How to be an American Housewife. The book is about the complicated interactions of friends and families, and one of the major issues is estrangement caused by a difficult family situation. It also has the same gimmick of opening the chapter with a quote from a book. (In How to be an American Housewife the book was a fictional guide book for Japanese brides, in this book, it is a guide book for growing roses. )

 

The protagonist is Gal Garner, a biology teacher who has suffered from kidney disease her entire life.