The Language of Flowers centers around Victoria, a just
emancipated eighteen year old that has been hardened by a lifetime of being
passed around through the foster care system.
From the time of her abandonment, Victoria has had little experience
with security, familial love and positive relationships. In a sense, Victoria has almost always been
“on her own” and this is just the first time she has no one directing her next
movement. She doesn’t have a family, a
plan, hopes or dreams, but she does have her connection to flowers. Homeless, she spends her days creating a
garden in an untended section of a park until, driven by hunger and necessity,
she uses her talent to secure a job with a local florist. Here, Victoria’s boundaries are tested. She is uncomfortable with opening up, gets
ill at the slightest touch, and has no desire to be attached to anyone or
anything permanent. Anything that is, aside
from her flowers. And suddenly, in the
form of a young man at a flower market, it all begins to change. She is forced to consider a future, but also
to face the secrets of her past.
The story opens on the day of Victoria’s emancipation, and
alternates between momentous moments of her childhood and her current struggles
to overcome her past, forgive herself, and learn to love. Diffenbaugh’s history as a foster parent
lends great authenticity to the characters and their complicated
relationships. I found her writing to
be very real, and at times raw. She
doesn’t hold back on showing the good and the bad of her characters in order to
win the reader’s approval of them. This
is especially true of Victoria. You
won’t always like her…in fact there were a few times when I was reading that I
wanted to look away. But, if you’re
like me, you will always root for her.
I think it’s because underneath it all, we can sense that she’s doing
her best with what she has…it’s just that what she has isn’t much.
And then there are the flowers. Flowers are to this book what New York is to Sex and the
City. The story would be impossible to
tell without them. Diffenbaugh is well
versed in the use of flowers to communicate in Victorian times, which I found
fascination. From the beginning the
flowers are critical in understanding who Victoria is. Where Victoria doesn’t “get” people…or
herself for that matter, she “gets” flowers.
They become her key to learning to communicate honestly, to
understanding others, and to making new beginnings.
Have you read The Language of Flowers? What did you think?
No comments:
Post a Comment