TITLE: The Language of Flowers
AUTHOR: Vanessa Diffenbaugh
GENRE: General Fiction
PUBLISHED: August 23, 2011
RATING: ★★★★★
PURCHASE LINKS: Amazon.com
MOBILISM LINK: Mobilism
Description: A mesmerizing, moving, and elegantly written debut novel, The Language of Flowers beautifully weaves past and present, creating a vivid portrait of an unforgettable woman whose gift for flowers helps her change the lives of others even as she struggles to overcome her own troubled past.
The Victorian language of flowers was used to convey romantic expressions: honeysuckle for devotion, asters for patience, and red roses for love. But for Victoria Jones, it’s been more useful in communicating grief, mistrust, and solitude. After a childhood spent in the foster-care system, she is unable to get close to anybody, and her only connection to the world is through flowers and their meanings.
Now eighteen and emancipated from the system, Victoria has nowhere to go and sleeps in a public park, where she plants a small garden of her own. Soon a local florist discovers her talents, and Victoria realizes she has a gift for helping others through the flowers she chooses for them. But a mysterious vendor at the flower market has her questioning what’s been missing in her life, and when she’s forced to confront a painful secret from her past, she must decide whether it’s worth risking everything for a second chance at happiness.
Review: I hear often that aspiring authors are instructed to write what they know. If true, then Vanessa Diffenbaugh has accomplished all that and more in this beautifully crafted first novel. Its characters seem vibrant, real, and alive and the story's situations had a ring of truth that, after I had finished the novel, I felt the need to learn more about the author. As it turns out, the story sounds so realistic because Diffenbaugh knows the foster system particularly well. She is a foster parent who has opened up her home to many foster children over the years.
The protagonist of The Language of Flowers is a very complicated character. Victoria was a lifelong foster child, rejected and disappointed so many times she has learned to keep aloof and remain distrustful of anyone who tries to get close to her. The novel begins with Victoria on her eighteenth birthday, officially "aged out" of foster care. She doesn't know how to trust anyone, how to make or keep a friend, how to get a job, or how to have a long-lasting relationship with anyone in any capacity. She only knows how to survive - and she prefers to do that alone.
Through flashbacks we learn about some of the many foster families who have failed her - most of them unworthy of Victoria's affection and either abusive or neglectful. However, there was a genuine mother figure in Victoria's life, a woman named Elizabeth who tried to adopt Victoria as a single parent. Unlike all the other foster parents, Elizabeth was kind, fair, and loving; one person who never wavered in her love for Victoria. Elizabeth had a sister who lived nearby and a nephew named Grant. For a short while, they were a family. But something went horribly wrong - Victoria hasn't seen Elizabeth for for many years - whatever happened, we readers do not find out why right away. Victoria rejects Elizabeth in the most dramatic way possible, but she cannot waste time with regret she has to live with what she has done:
"This time, there was no escape, I could not turn away, could not leave without accepting what I had done. There was only one way to the other side, and that was through the pain."
However, one important gift from Elizabeth lives on - Elizabeth loved flowers and taught Victoria the language of flowers; that each flower has a meaning and a message. After Victoria leaves her foster home, through a stroke of luck and circumstance, Victoria gets a job working for a florist. Seeing her potential and her knowledge of flowers, her employer lets her start arranging flowers, and Victoria begins to specialize in making custom arrangements by request, using the each flower's combined meanings to get a desired outcome for the customer.
Victoria says,
"It wasn't as if the flowers themselves held within them the ability to bring an abstract definition into physical reality. Instead, it seemed that...expecting change, and the very belief in the possibility instigated a transformation."
For awhile this is enough, until Victoria sees Elizabeth's nephew, Grant, at a farmer's market selling flowers. He recognizes and starts a conversation with her. Because of their shared past, he is probably only one of the teenage boys who had a chance of getting to know her. They soon start an odd flirtation using flowers to communicate, then began an uneasy friendship, that slowly becomes something more.
But Grant brings the past rushing back, and with it memories of Elizabeth. It seems Victoria can't get close to anyone with panicking and pushing them away, no matter who it is... Oh, I must stop; I feel I've told you too much already.
Okay, one more clue: at the end, there is someone Victoria grows to love. When she meets her, she surrounds herself with a plant called dittany. What does that signify? Well you will just have to consult your Victorian Flower Dictionary to find out for sure. She talks about the person she cares about here:
"Her eyes were open, taking in my tired face... Her face twitched into what looked like a squinty smile, and in her wordless expression I saw gratitude, and relief, and trust. I wanted, desperately, not to disappoint her."
I have been trying to figure out why this well written but simple piece of contemporary fiction has touched me so deeply and deserves five stars. I think because Victoria dares to put into practice all the conflicted feelings that many women feel about their own mothers, their partners, their children. She is a decent person, she wants to give and receive love, but because of her past she just cannot help but push people away. If you have ever known anyone with a lot of "baggage" you will recognize them when you see Victoria fiercely reject those who sincerely love and care about her. You just want to shake Victoria and tell her, "Hey, these people are okay. Trust them! It's okay to let yourself love and be loved!"
Toward the end, Victoria lets down her guard and muses:
"Perhaps the unattached, the unwanted, the unloved, could grow to give love as lushly as anyone else."
The ending remains unresolved, but realistic and hopeful. I feel this book might not be for every reader, but will certainly appeal to women of any age, especially those who have conflicted feelings about the people they love. If you liked the premise of White Oleander by Janet Fitch you will like this book. But even if you didn't, give this book a try because The Language of Flowers is a much better book that will appeal to a wider audience of women. It is also worthwhile to pick up the companion volume A Victorian Flower Dictionary to learn about the meaning of flowers. I give The Language of Flowers five enthusiastic stars.
Thank you.