The Language of Flowers

 

Reviews by Jeanne

Growing up, I adored Agatha Christie’s mysteries, especially the ones with Miss Marple as the sleuth. However, I found myself frequently mystified by some of the clues—specifically, Miss Marple’s recognition of meaning in flowers sent as messages.  How were people supposed to know all that? As an adult, I found books on the flower languages and became intrigued.  The Victorians were the ones who really popularized the idea, and Miss Marple having grown up in that era would of course be knowledgeable about it so it all made more sense to me.  Here are a few books the library holds on the topic:

The Floral Birthday Book by Bernard F. Carter says that it is based on an old book Carter found in “an almost derelict cottage in Cornwall.”  The book had illustrations of flowers, one for each day, and a verse or anecdote accompanying.   Charmed, watercolorist Carter had the book restored as much as possible but ended up more or less recreating it himself by painting all the plants mentioned. Naturally, the first thing most people do with such a book is to look up birthdays of family and friends to see the listing! I chose October 28, which has Purple Columbine as the flower.  It means “Resolution” and the quotation is from Shakespeare. In the back is a list of all the plants (not all are flowers) with the scientific name, the meaning, and the date associated with the plant.  The true standout of this book, though, is the illustrations.  While not large at three per page, they are exquisitely detailed.  This one is great fun to browse!

More modern and in some ways more informative is The Secret Language of Flowers:  Rediscovering Traditional Meanings by Shane Connolly, photography by Jan Baldwin. This book is in sections by meanings such as “Expectations, birth & beginnings” to “Remembrance, regrets & farewells.” The text gives some excellent background on the chosen plant or flower, historical use, and meaning as well as what some mean in combination.  The pictures are lovely but sometimes are of bouquets rather than the individual flower. There aren’t as many plants listed as in the previous book, but I relished the text with the more detailed information. At the back, there is a listing of plants with the meaning, but perhaps even more important, there is a listing of meanings with the plant names.

Flowers, the Angels’ Alphabet:  The Language and Poetry of Flowers by Susan Loy features beautiful portraits of flowers with their meanings and a history.  There’s also a brief description of where the flowers grow.  These illustrations are just wonderful; I could see these framed on a wall.  These take up just about a third of the book, while the rest is devoted to meanings with the associated flower or plant, and then the reverse, the plant followed by a meaning.  With this one, complex meanings are given and it should be noted that a flower can have different meanings.  I could totally see sending messages this way, especially if you wanted to insult someone under the guise of giving them a seemingly lovely bouquet.   I have a couple of people I would like to send a scarlet geranium to, all the while having plausible deniability because there’s more than one meaning. On the positive side, I will cherish my zinnias all the more now, because they mean thoughts of absent friends.

By the way, some meanings have changed in modern day possibly due to commerce. After all, it’s better to market yellow roses as being symbols of friendship than infidelity or jealousy!

I’m ready to revisit some of those Miss Marple stories now, and with these books by my side I think I stand a better chance of cracking the case! 

 

(PS There is a charming little mystery series by Beverly Allen, The Bridal Bouquet Shop Mysteries, in which the heroine makes up bouquets using the language of flowers, which I enjoyed thoroughly. The first title is Bloom and Doom.)

The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh

Reviewed by Ambrea

Victoria Jones has spent her entire life bouncing between foster homes, cultivating solitude and growing mistrust—and, more notably, memorizing the meanings of flowers.  At eighteen, homeless and penniless, Victoria discovers she has a unique gift as a florist and, as her talents grow, she realizes that the flowers she chooses for her bouquets are able to help people and give them what they most want, like honeysuckle for devotion, asters for patience, and red roses for love.  But after a chance encounter at the flower market with a man from her past, Victoria must confront some of her most painful secrets if she wishes to protect her present and ensure her future.

For the most part, I enjoyed The Language of Flowers.  Vanessa Diffenbaugh combines esoteric knowledge of flowers, the Victorian language of flowers, with the modern plight of a young girl trapped within the foster care system.  I liked that Diffenbaugh took the time and effort to show her readers the meanings of flowers and plants:  moss for motherhood, ferns for secrecy, daisies for innocence, honeysuckle for devotion, turnips for charity, sage for good health.  I was surprised to learn that sunflowers mean “false riches,” and yellow roses represent “infidelity.”  And I was especially interested in the combinations of flowers which Victoria used to communicate.  It gives the story a subtlety, gives Victoria a guarded quality, that made The Language of Flowers a unique tone.

Likewise, I liked being able to see the world from Victoria’s perspective, to witness her struggle to find normalcy and stability in a system that’s anything but.  I was intrigued by the glimpses Diffenbaugh gave into Victoria’s life—into the life of a foster child, into the life of a young homeless woman struggling to find her place in the world—and I was shocked by what I found.  As the parent of a foster child, Diffenbaugh has had an inside view on the types of struggles that foster and adoptive children endure as they transition to a new home—or fall back into the system.  She knows the difficulties these children face; moreover, I think she does fairly well at illuminating these issues in Victoria’s story.

However, I didn’t feel like I could properly relate to Victoria.  Something about the way she was characterizing, or the way she tells her story, made it difficult for me to become attached to her as a narrator, to really sink into her story.  I was eager to reach some kind of happy ending, but I wasn’t nearly as invested in her story as I could have been.  I think I would have understood Victoria better if I had read Diffenbaugh’s explanation of her character, which she gave in the back of the book in an interview:

“The hardest part of writing [The Language of Flowers] was finding the right balance in Victoria’s character.  I wanted her to be tough, distrustful, and full of anger:  all characteristics that would be true to her history of being abandoned at birth and never knowing love.  But I also wanted the reader to root for her—to understand her capacity to be gentle and loving, even before Victoria understands it herself.  So in the first fifty pages of the novel, she spends much of her time nurturing plants:  smoothing petals, checking moisture, and cradling shocked roots.  This felt like the perfect way to show both sides of her character, long before it would have been possible for me to describe her displaying affection or kindness toward another human being.”

Personally, I think I would have better understood her emotional state—her desperation, her doubt and fear, her distrust and anger and hatred toward others—better if I’d had the opportunity to read the author’s interpretation of Victoria.  For that reason, I think The Language of Flowers may be worth a second attempt at reading.  I think I better understand Victoria, and I think I could better appreciate Diffenbaugh’s novel after having the chance to see the author’s personal thoughts and gather my own insights into the novel.

Season of the Dragonflies by Sarah Creech

Reviewed by Jeanne

For four generations, the Lenore women have crafted scents. It all started back when Great-Grandmother Serena ran away with a handsome young man to the rainforest of Borneo and discovered a wondrous, magical plant which became the main ingredient—the very secret main ingredient.  These perfumes don’t just smell nice.  They enhance the strongest traits of the wearer, enabling her to rise to the top of whatever profession she is suited for. The scents are sold only to a select few, and never to those who would compete in the same profession.

The business has been passed down from mother to daughter until now.  A business which has thrived is now threatened from several sides.  Willow, the current matriarch, finds herself struggling to remember things.  Mya, the elder daughter, has always been considered the heir and has spent her life learning the trade at the expense of her personal life.  She is chaffing to take over from Willow’s control and may be willing to cross some lines to do it.  Younger daughter Lucia fled the business and the magic to marry an artist, but now that marriage is falling apart and she has nowhere to go.

Nowhere, that is,  but back home to the family farm in Virginia.  She dreads facing her mother and Willow, knowing she’ll be seen as a failure.  She’ll stay just long enough to decide what to do next. She has no idea that things are about to go very, very wrong.

In addition to the family tensions, a pop star client has reneged on her word and is threatening blackmail. Worst of all, the magical plants seem to be dying.  One way or another, it appears the company is doomed.

At its core, Season of the Dragonflies is a tale of mothers and daughters, sisters and suitors. It reminds me a bit of Sarah Addison Allen’s books with the blend of romance, family relationships, and magic.  It also seems to take to heart the motto “Virginia is for Lovers.”  The female characters are strong and interesting, ready to make their own choices instead of passively waiting.  Sometimes these choices are the right ones, but they accept the responsibility.  A sheen of magic shimmers through the book, from the perfume itself to the dragonflies that seem to follow Lucia to Mya’s deer.  Creech uses the Blue Ridge Mountain setting to good effect, tying the most of the characters closely to the land.  The male characters don’t have as much depth or personality, but then they are just the means to an end.  This is a fantasy, after all, and we just want to get to the “happily ever after.” 

This is a debut novel. I expect we’ll be hearing more from Ms. Creech in the future.