Saturday, April 21, 2012

The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh

This novel truly lives up to the description mezmerizing. It grabs you, pulls you in and doesn`t let you go until the last page.
Victoria Jones uses the Language of Flowers, an old Victorian Romantasism to express her feelings, which considering her past are mainly mistrust, resement, grief and bewilderment at social expectations. To say Victoria has had a difficult and unsatisfactory experience in her life time of Foster Care is to state the obvious.Her one really positive experience ended in disaster and at 18 after being freed from the continual round of Care Homes, Victoria discovers that she has a wonderful talent, a remarkable gifting in her ability to match the flowers to the people and it is this gift that leads her down the path to true healing and reconciliation but not before an awful lot has transpired in her life.
Vanessa Diffenbaugh weaves a seamless tale that takes you back and forth and through Victoria`s life in a way that leaves you stunned in certain passages, she makes the best possible use of descriptive language and paints her characters with a rare vividness, warts and all. There are secrets and lies and her characters are best described as quirky, they all struggle to fit what might be described as the social norm, each character however has his or her own giftings and an ability to empathise, to understand in a way that I found rather unique. The bigness of their hearts and their kindnesses, both big and small  made me cry in places, equally there was frustration at their stubborness, you wanted to give them a shake at certain points or to yell, it is to the author`s talent that we can see the right path but the characters often can`t.
A truly engaging read, a page turner, not always easy, sometimes gritty but a most satisfying read, the power of love is not to me underestimated.

Available in paperback, it would make a wonderful Mother`s Day Gift!

No comments: