The Language of Flowers: A Novel Review

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(More customer reviews)The Language of Flowers is a moving story of a young girl kicked around by life and the foster care system. It kept me glued to the page this holiday weekend, as I couldn't seem to let go of Victoria and her unique means of communication. We first meet Victoria on her eighteenth birthday, when she ages out of the system and is thrust into society. Her social worker asks for her plan, but the problem is Victoria doesn't have one. She doesn't know what she wants and is carrying around enough anger, misery and self loathing that I had a hard time imagining her ever being able to cope with anything.
The story is told in chapters alternating between the present and events that occurred when she was 10 years old. This is when she had her last chance at a family and a normal life. We get a surprisingly vivid picture of both the 10 year old Victoria and the 18 year old Victoria. Her story is heartbreakingly real and will keep any reader riveted to the page as you cheer for this young woman to open up and learn to accept love and hope. Her anger is blistering and her narrative voice is strong and unfaltering as the reader gets a disturbing look at what can happen to kids in foster care. The scars Victoria carries are deep and lasting and the author creates a surprising amount of suspense as you are left to wonder just how she might overcome them.
All of the information about the actual language of flowers is fascinating and adds a magical element to the story that served to both temper some of the harsh emotional realities and give Victoria a port in her stormy life. One of my favorite parts of the book is when she meets Grant and attempts to communicate with him using flowers. She is not used to anyone else speaking her private language, and is absolutely floored when he responds in kind. Flowers link everything in this book, and although I am not a gardener, or especially knoledgeable about flowers, I found them to be a charming, almost mystical part of the story.
The only thing that keeps this from a five star rating for me is the ending, and I'm not quite sure why. Perhaps because it seemed to become predictable at the end, and Victoria seemed to turn her back on the flowers that had given her solace throughout the entire story. It lost a bit of it's magic in an ending that was just a bit too pedestrian for me given the novel's unique characters. While the ending was a bit anticlimactic, it was still an entertaining, compelling story that didn't pull any punches in it's heartfelt portrayal of human emotion. Recommended.

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