If, like me, you like to spend your Sunday mornings poring over the day’s papers, you might have come across a piece in the UK’s Sunday Times Style Magazine, a week prior to the publication of Vanessa Diffenbaugh’s The Language of Flowers, entitled “What it feels like: when fostering a child goes wrong”.
This interview with the author tells of her experiences as a foster parent, in particular the story of one foster child whom Diffenbaugh believes she ultimately failed.
It is precisely this poignant expression of failure that lies at the heart of this debut novel, which is not only a tale of haunting loneliness but also of the courage it takes to forgive, even when the person to forgive is yourself.
The Story
Victoria Jones has just turned eighteen, which means she has been emancipated from the foster care system she has spent her whole life in, and is now ‘free’ to go wherever she wants. Except that she has nowhere to go. Once, at the age of nine, Victoria had come enticingly close to such a place that she could call home - with Elizabeth, a foster mother who was keen to adopt Victoria as her own.
But something went wrong, and now Victoria lives in the shadows of other people’s lives – sleeping on the streets, lurking in restaurants trying to fill her ever-hungry stomach with leftovers and wandering the city jobless, without prospects, without a life.
The only thing that Victoria knows, thanks to Elizabeth, is flowers. Their names, shapes and colours; when they bloom and what they mean. This last, particularly, defines the novel in a beautifully visceral way – through her years of neglect and abuse Victoria is terrified of human contact, and at first communicates in mono-syllables, reluctant beyond all measure to give away even the slightest hint of herself. It is not that she is uneducated – she is a quick learner with an intelligence that precious few people in her life have recognised. It is simply that she is much more adept at communicating through the language of the flowers, a Victorian concept long since forgotten. One of the novel’s most engaging sequences is Victoria’s silent conversation with Grant, the mysterious flower vendor, as they communicate by presenting the other with a flower that represents what they are feeling: she gives him rhododendron – beware – and he returns with mistletoe – I surmount all obstacles. It is an oddly thrilling exchange that finds the reader aligning their emotions with Victoria’s, feeling at once mistrustful and yet curious to know more.
As the novel progresses we learn more about Victoria’s past –each alternating chapter takes us back to a nine-year old Victoria learning to love, trust and accept Elizabeth, and thus we come ever closer to that defining moment in which everything changed, and was lost. This literary conceit is not original but is nonetheless very effective as it simultaneously acquaints us with two Victorias, the before and after, allowing the reader to understand her sometimes cruel decisions.
What I loved about this novel was, of course, the primary theme of the importance of flowers in helping us express our feelings when words cannot. For someone like Victoria who cannot trust anyone, least of all herself, these flowers are the only constant, the only unconditional love she feels able to accept. It is no accident that the flower she identifies most with is the common thistle, which symbolises misanthropy. Victoria seems determined to find herself unworthy, “unforgivably flawed”, and doesn’t realise her own strength. The quiet defiance of her circumstances is manifested not only when she allows herself to be ‘mentored’ by Renata, the florist who offers her a job, but also later, when she, perhaps quite unknowingly, offers another young girl like herself the same chance to rebuild her life and escape her own darkness.
This is, of course, that classic tale of the underdog who first must fall to the lowest point of despair and then only rise from the ashes to gain a truer understanding of herself and the world she inhabits. It is a redemptive journey and the reader is never led to believe that there could be any other outcome than one in which Victoria finds peace.
In this, it is perhaps achingly familiar. But do not let that put you off – it is not the story, but the telling of it that counts, and in that Diffenbaugh succeeds admirably. Her command on language is lucid and in parts incredibly beautiful. At one point, one of the characters tells Victoria that she “didn’t like to waste her voice”, and that is exactly how this novel feels. Every word is carefully measured and inherently important to the one that follows; there is no waste or excess. Diffenbaugh’s own experiences as a foster parent are evident in the intricacies of the text and I believe this provides a resonance that stays with the reader long after the novel ends.
Diffenbaugh also supplies a Dictionary of Flowers that follows the novel, which excites me because I know that I will now be forever cautious when sending flowers lest I inadvertently convey the wrong message.
For me, the phrase “Say it with flowers” has taken on an entirely new meaning.
The Language of Flowers is published by Pan Macmillan in the UK and Ballantine Books in the USA.