The Language of Flowers: A Novel

Only a day or two passed before I read “The Language of Flowers” a second time. Thank goodness. My memory, created during the first reading, holds story-holes. I created ugly potholes by not knowing which detail to understand, now or appreciate later --- during the first reading. And, holes need filling. Every detail, each symbol, each sub-theme, page by page means more to me now, almost as if I were beginning to learn a new language. The second reading shows and validates details and sub-themes missed the first time. “It feels as if I’m reading a different book,” I say to myself. And I anticipate each additional reading will thicken understanding of what the story shares. I love this story, as painful as it is at times.. During the first reading, I keep reading one more page, then one more chapter. Then I read another page, another chapter, on and on. To stop and wet my dry mouth and throat seems a time-waster. Each chapter introduces a surprise. Each chapter's last sentence keeps me anticipating the unexpected that Diffenbaugh will share next. While most of Victoria’s jaw-droppers displease me or make me feel uncomfortable, they keep fascinating and riveting my focus, as I read and turn page ... after page ... after page--- not able to stop. Two questions birth themselves and stay with me, as I move through this tale: • How real is this story? It feels like a dream, a bad one --- no, perhaps a nightmare, for all characters. • Why is the book called “The Language of Flowers?” The title feels light-hearted, maybe literary, even botanical --- almost, even artificial. Yet, I know it’s not. The second reading, I keep working to flesh-out a comfortable answer to the story’s purpose. Vanessa presents Victoria's story as a real-world experience --- yet it doesn’t feel believably so. Wounds and damages just don’t heal as quickly as the story's words and rhythms suggest, in real-life. I ask: Might this story’s content be identified as a blend or a collage of an adult contemporary fairy tale, a fantasy, a story of secular-mysticism, a fictional memoir, a surrealistic metaphor, an unfinished psychological case-study draft? Is it? I wonder. Perchance it’s imaginary. I keep searching the story’s content. “Is it phantasmagoria-like?" I ask myself. "Does the text hide a less obvious more meaningful or realistic solution?" Hmm? Coincidently, I watched Offenbach’s fabulous opera “Les Contes de’ Hoffmann,” between my first and second readings. With tears in my eyes, I recognize that in the epilogue, sung by the muse (Kate Lindsey) and The Metropolitan Opera Chorus*, I hear Offenbach’s music, and the English subtitles answer the two questions which developed during my first read. The opera’s ending words cause me to feel that Diffenbaugh’s muse might well have been like the one portrayed by Offenbach --- if not the same. I share some words from Hoffman's opera for your consideration: "Let the ashes of your heart rekindle your genius. “Smile upon your sorrows with serenity. “Your muse will comfort you. “Your suffering will be blessed. “One grows through love...and grows more through tears. “Let the ashes of your heart...rekindle your genius. “Smile upon your sorrows with serenity. “Your muse will comfort you. “Your suffering will be blessed. “Love lends man greatness. “Tears make him greater still. " “The Language of Flowers” is about much, much more than simply Victoria's (Diffenbaugh's) flowers' symbolic and mystical meanings. May you grow from the pain and suffering you are likely to feel, about Victoria and memories of your life-experiences, while you read this remarkable book. What will your favored flowers communicate to you? What will you be trying to communicate with the someone to whom you send your selected flowers? Victoria, Grant, and Elizabeth, and maybe you and me, grow and develop as we learn from life-experiences. And that we live individually and personally. Let your muse speak insights to you. As my reading-muse whispers insights from Diffenbaugh’s text, “The Language of Flowers” becomes increasingly valuable to me. Some reviewers give 5-stars when a book introduces them to something that feels as if it's giving them an insight that may change their life. "The Language of Flowers" might be one that carries life-modifying and enriching insights. Insights revealed while reading a book that is shared surreptitiously, simultaneously, with another work that peels similar scales from our eyes, unexpectedly --- even when 180-years separate one text and the other. As they did in this review's example. I gave the author’s book 4-stars when I finished the first read. After the second, I changed to 5-stars. Is there a rating higher than 5-stars, for me to use after I reread this wonderfully and beautifully written tale a third, fourth, and fifth time? Yes, there is --- even though there is no place to validate higher rankings with a checkmark. Instead, we may need to find a reading-muse to whisper Diffenbaugh’s secrets to us. And then be content with what we hear. *(December 19, 2009 performance)

I began reading this book yesterday afternoon. I finished it early this morning. I could not put it down. The book was so well written that I just had to know what would happen next. The main character, Victoria, turns 18 and ages out of the foster care system. She has to figure out how to survive. She is a person whom the flowers to best describe her would be thistle (misanthropy) and Oleander (beware). She has worked for the last decade of her life to build a high wall around herself, refusing to let anyone in. She understands and uses the language of flowers to communicate and describe how she sees the world around her. At one point Victoria convinces the local florist to give her a job. It is through this job of working with flowers that her life begins to change. She runs into someone from her past who understands the language of flowers just like she does. The book then flips back and forth from telling Victoria telling the story as a young girl in a foster placement to present day life trying to make it in the adult world. Victoria's character is not a very likable person. She makes some choices and does some things in this book that make the reader want to slap her. However, the author did a good job of keeping the story realistic. A perfect ending for this book would not have been ideal. Nothing in Victoria's life had been perfect up to this point. Why should everything come together for her in the end? The title of this review "Moss grows without roots..." has to do with maternal love. Can someone give maternal love who never received it themselves? This question is weaved in and out of this story. I don't want to spoil anything so I can't go into detail. You will have to read it for yourself. This is a good summer read.

"The Language of Flowers" by Vanessa Diffenbaugh was highly recommended by a book blogger whose opinions and tastes in books I respect very much. So, naturally, I had high expectations. I was not disappointed, although the review on the blog made me think that the novel would be completely different from what it really was... The novel begins on Victoria Jones' eighteenth birthday. It is also her last day in foster care, and she has to move to the "halfway house", where she can live for free for three months, while looking for a job. The advice of her social worker, Meredith, is to find a job as soon as possible. But Victoria had been hardly listening to Meredith's advice throughout her life (and failed numerous adoption attempts as a result), so now she also ignores it. And, sure enough, when the three months are up, she finds herself living in the nearby park... Only then things begin to be interesting. Victoria, antisocial and grumpy, has one passion: flowers. She knows virtually all about them, how to grow them, arrange them, and, as a bonus, she is familiar with the symbolic flower language. And... well, it should be enough to say that miracles do happen. Victoria embarks on the way to her own happiness, learns how to live her own life not hurting herself and others, and manages to help a lot of people. The novel features frequent retrospective chapters, going back to the time when Victoria was ten and the last adoption attempt was taking place. The memories are explanatory for the reader, but at the same time serve as a catharsis for Victoria, whose actions are affected very much by her thoughts and grievances about the past. "The Language of Flowers" has everything a good novel needs: a great, emotionally loaded and well-told story, interesting cast of characters (dominated, but not completely overshadowed by the main character). Victoria is so withdrawn, misogynic and solitary, that it is obvious she needs love and affection. I am always drawn to such characters and this one was no exception. The welcome original "spice", which is made the theme in the book, is the flower symbolic. I was really fascinated by the less obvious meanings of flowers and plants. Of course, everyone knows that red roses symbolize love, but who would suspect that basil (my favorite herb...) is the symbol of hate or that moss signifies maternal love... I think that the ending was a little rushed, but all in all, it is a great novel and a pleasure to read.

I think this is one of those books where the "sample" function on Kindle comes into its own - I can easily see why some people might not get on with the book, and how the main character could easily grate on a reader. It's definitely worth having a taster, because if she gets on your nerves, then you probably shouldn't download the book! That said, if the sample grabs you, this book is definitely well worth a read. It was one that was on my wishlist for a long time, but I almost wish I had downloaded it at the higher price and read it sooner - I enjoyed it that much. While I'm talking about Kindle-related things, the conversion to Kindle is great. A very few times when words have ended up jammed together ("tome" rather than "to me") which seems to be a recurring problem with Kindle books in my experience, but otherwise perfect: TOC works brilliantly, references every chapter... basically, no problems that are going to get in the way of the reader's enjoyment. So... the book itself. The story is told in first person from Victoria's point of view. She is a young woman on the eve of emancipation, having spent most of her life being shuffled from foster home to foster home and then through a succession of group homes. There are two parallel storylines: We see Victoria turning 18 and leaving the welfare system and the safety net of sorts that her social worker has provided over the years. We also see her aged 10, in the last foster home/possible adoptive home chance before she was officially labelled "unadoptable". For much of the book, these two storylines intertwine, a chapter of the present time followed by a chapter of the past. It's not an especially comfortable or easy thing to spend a whole book in Victoria's head. She is angry, distrustful, dislikes being touched, lies, steals... she's a bundle of flaws, traits and characteristics that make her a difficult character, especially as she spends considerable energy trying to repel those around her and is incapable of loving or trusting anyone, or of accepting that anyone may love or trust her. It may seem unrealistic to some, but anyone who is or has known someone who has any kind of problem (whether or not it could be categorised as an actual "attachment disorder") will realise that the prickly exterior is exactly that - an exterior, a protection, a defense, a hedgehog's coat of spines to protect its soft belly. Basically, behaviour learned in childhood and held on to even when it's inappropriate, unhelpful and downright damaging. Whether the reader enjoys the book or not, I suspect, has much to do with whether one identifies with her in her attempt to keep the world at a distance - so that she won't get hurt, and so that she won't hurt anyone else. She comes across as pretty unsympathetic on the surface, but under that there is a deeply hurt, broken young woman. Personally, although I have little concretely in common with her, I identified with her so strongly that at times lines from the book made me weep. There's a certain flavour of magical realism in how Diffenbaugh uses the language of flowers. I've noticed some people dislike that, personally I love a little magic sprinkled into my fiction so I loved it. Victoria's story is one of redemption, of learning to live and to love, of failure and forgiveness. It reads, to me, as a deeply personal work for the author, which is not surprising given her history of fostering and her involvement with The Camellia Network. This is not a light read - certainly not chick lit or a beach read. It is, however, a deeply involving novel which touched me deeply. Definitely one to at least give a chance to: and to return to my original point, one of which it is well worth downloading the sample.

Il libro è stupendo, rifinito in tutte le sue parti, dalla rilegatura alle illustrazioni. Lo stato dell'oggetto in questione è ottimo. Lo consiglio assolutamente.

I don't re-read a book usually but this year I thought to read at least one and I'm glad I did it. This book fills me with joy despite not being a happening book but how it shows the vulnerable side of human makes me fall in love with it. If I'll be honest I want to start listening to the audibook again. I guess now I know why people re-read a book. The book revolves around Victoria who is an orphan and spend most of her life with foster families and child care homes. Once she met Elizabeth, who is the closest she can get as her mother but some unfortunate turn of events draws them apart. And Victoria isn't someone who abides by the rules or will listen to you, she will do everything on her own terms and won't trouble you for anything, but she has her own set of fears and apprehensions. It is a twisted tale of what is lost but not forgotten. It talks a great deal about human relationships. Sometimes all you have to do is forgive the person and forgive yourself for the deeds you have done to make space for the old and new. It is my all time favourite book and just after finishing it I felt I want to start it again. I don't know how it is going to resonate with you but it will strike a chord somewhere.

I bought & read this years ago & I still remember it. An absolutely original story that kept me wanting to read more every time I picked it up. So good.

Hace mucho que lo quería. La espera valió la pena, es un libro muy lindo. Si te gustan las flores lo amarás