Review "The Language of Flowers" by Vanessa Diffenbaugh

ANYONE CAN GROW INTO SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL
“A deftly powerful story of finding your way home, even after you’ve burned every bridge behind you, The Language of Flowers took my heart apart, chapter by chapter, then reassembled the broken pieces in better working condition. I loved this book.”—Jamie Ford, author of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
Author: Vanessa DiffenbaughHardcover: 400 pages  Publisher: Macmillan Publishing Date: 19 Aug 2011Price: £12.99UK Version
Plot:The Victorian language of flowers was used to express emotions: honeysuckle for devotion, azaleas for passion, and red roses for love. But for Victoria Jones, it has been more useful in communicating feelings like 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, Victoria has nowhere to go, and sleeps in a public park, where she plants a small garden of her own. When her talent is discovered by a local florist, she discovers her gift for helping others through the flowers she chooses for them. But it takes meeting a mysterious vendor at the flower market for her to realise what's been missing in her own life, and as she starts to fall for him, she's forced to confront a painful secret from her past, and decide whether it’s worth risking everything for a second chance at happiness. The Language of Flowers is a heartbreaking and redemptive novel about the meaning of flowers, the meaning of family, and the meaning of love.
REVIEWOn next 5th of May Garzanti will publish in Italy, and contemporaneously all over the world, The Language of Flowers, a genuine publishing phenomenon even before its release. Purchased for more than a million of dollars in the United States, the novel has since then been disputed by all Italian publishers and was purchased simultaneously in 30 foreign Countries. The debut novel of Mrs. Diffenbaugh has captured the interest of international publishers thanks to the mysterious charm that lingers around the language of flowers and the incredibly moving story of a young woman who learns to interact with the outside world, in a training journey that at last will make her blossom and get out of that little cocoon of loneliness that she had built around it.
The novel begins during the 18th birthday of Victoria Jones, the day of her emancipation from the expectation system. Since she was abandoned after only three weeks after her birth, her life had always been an endless list of bad foster parents and brutal group homes, with the exception of the year she had spent with Elizabeth, a woman who will teach the wonderful language of flowers. A lost and forgotten language which, over the years, had acquired charm and mystery. During the Victorian age it was commonly used to convey romantic feelings, as a secret language for lovers and anyone to show love and friendship to someone special. Flowers, with their beauty, their sweet scent and their magical spell have their own intrinsic ability to communicate. Depending on the species, variety and colour, each flower expresses a secret and intimate message which sounds in the mind of the recipient without the need for idle words.
Despite the initial reluctance and resentment she feels against this woman, little Victoria has experienced a fantastic year surrounded by nature and affection from a woman who loved her like a daughter. She had finally found a place where she wanted to stay, but because of her jealousy, anger and lack of confidence, she threw away, maybe, her only chance to be happy. A past which she tries hopelessly to escape from. She wants to forget the fleeting happiness that had filled her heart with hope. Though she’s young, Victoria has soon realized that she was just deluded and that for a girl like her there was no room in the world of sweet feelings that animated other people. The loneliness would have been enough.
For this young, eighteen years old girl, who for the first time finds herself to have to live on her own strength it is difficult to communicate feelings like pain, mistrust and loneliness dwelling in her soul, and just because of this inability, she cannot get close to anyone, neither friends nor family, and her only link with the world are flowers and their meanings. Victoria is afraid of physical contact. She is afraid of words, her own and others’. Above all, she's afraid to love and to be loved. There's only one place where all her fears vanish in silence and peace: it’s her secret garden in Portero Hill Park, in San Francisco. The flowers, which she has planted in this unknown corner of the city, are her home. Her refuge. Her voice. Through their language Victoria shows her deepest emotions.
After a few weeks she lives in her magical garden, which gives her peace and serenity, Victoria knows a florist, Renata, who will give her opportunity to redeem herself from the poor conditions in which she lives, compelled to sleep under the trees also in the coldest nights and to eat the leftovers of some strangers, offering her a job as assistant in her shop. Thus begins for her a new life. She will help Renata at daily fees and to organize numerous weddings, because working with flowers is her vocation: she changes, the muscles of her face relax and her eyes burn with passion.
Thanks to this new job she also has the opportunity to meet a mysterious flower salesman, Grant, young and charming, who will slowly penetrate her detachment and mistrust. Their relationship grows deeper and deeper, in a crescendo of emotions and feelings that surround her in heir tricky turns, and in her heart fear and desire mix in equal and unpredictable ways. Not only she allows him to touch her, but she also wants him to do it and Victoria begins to wonder if it is possible for her to change. Their relationship becomes more intimate, but if he would discover the truth he would hate her for what she did. She cannot live next to him a life veiled by lies and remorse. They are not meant to be together.
Sometimes it's hard to love, but it is impossible not to and to avoid this feeling. Despite her reluctance and difficulty to deal with a life that she would have never expected, Victoria must surrender to the love for the mysterious flower salesman, who will make her rediscover the happiness that she had always missed. But when Victoria will be forced to face a painful secret from her past, inevitably she will have to decide if it's really worth risking everything you have earned to have a second chance.
The story unfolds itself between past and present, making us know the protagonist’s background and the situations of extreme difficulty and pain that led her to become the person we know in the present, creating a vivid portrait of a young woman who has to accept that she is a person, a woman and a daughter worthy of love and affection. The author fully engages us emotionally. Thanks to an elegant, poetic and compelling style we find ourselves suspended in a timeless dimension, trapped in a story which will take us on a fascinating journey which will leave us breathless. It’s nearly impossible to stop reading this book.
The Language of Flowers, the debut novel by Vanessa Diffenbaugh, is poignant and devastating but in the meantime it maintains a hopeful glow. A wonderfully written witness of the miraculous healing power of love, on the meaning of flowers, on the real sense of family and motherhood. At the heart of this book, the feelings of a young woman who are narrated in an almost out of time dimension, lulled by the sweet and sour scent of flowers, which refers to the inner rebirth of Victoria. A journey through the bitter notes of loneliness, abandonment and isolation that for 19 years had gently and hopelessly trapped the heart of Victoria, making it fertile to love and affection. But it will be thanks to a loving mother, a young florist and mysterious love and to Renata, who will give her a chance for redemption, that this arid heart will find that remorse is not the only choice towards a permanent and indelible past, and that life can donate anyone also pleasant surprises .
Victoria is like a white rosebud that slowly blooms and turns red. Flowers will sooth the wounds of her soul while love will redeem those of her heart. A complete hero who will win your heart, embroiling it in a web of contrasting feelings. A bittersweet novel that portrays a woman in search of herself. A hard, romantic, sweet, passionate, realistic, moving and desperate story. The initial hardness, steeped in loneliness, remorse and hate, is soothed during the novel who is lighted by feelings like a mother's love, which illuminates the existence of Victoria, and the passion for Grant, a man who was able to understand, was able to read in the depth of her soul and give her the hope who seemed to be missing in the descrambling fragments of its existence. A young man who has conquered her with the flowers she loves so much and which will continue to be the happy companions during all her life, despite Victoria she has now found the voice to communicate her feelings.
The Language of Flowers is composed by a perfect union of all the essential elements necessary to create a story that will live long in the heart of readers. A wonderful debut novel that pleasantly surprised and excited me. It is forecast to be one of the best novels of the season. A must
THE AUTHOR: Vanessa Diffenbaugh was born in San Francisco and raised in Chico, California. After studying creative writing and education at Stanford, she went on to teach art and writing to youth in low-income communities. She and her husband PK have three children: Tre’von, 18, Chela, 4, and Miles, 3. Tre’von, a former foster child, is attending New York University on a Gates Millenium Scholarship. Vanessa and her family currently live in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where her husband is studying urban school reform at Harvard.