Recent Reviews
the Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh
Vanessa Diffenbaugh’s The Language of Flowers is a beautiful book about the redemptive power of love, wisdom, grace and healing. By illuminating the Victorian era practice of communicating feelings through flower selection, Diffenbaugh softens the otherwise painful story of a young women trapped in the foster care system. We first meet 18 year-old Victoria Jones on her “emancipation day.” Victoria's social worker is driving her to a transition home in the Sunset District of San Francisco. Victoria feels unwanted, unloved, and unworthy. Abandoned at three weeks, Victoria has lived in dozens of foster homes. Though she is bright, her anti-social behavior and attachment disorder cause her to hide within herself. Victoria has pushed away anyone that begins to care about her. The pain of familiar isolation is better than the pain of rejection and abandonment. Miraculously, she endures the foster care system for 18 years. After running away from her “transition” home, she is homeless and living in a public park. She eventually works for a florist named Renata and rents a tiny room from Renata’s sister. After she meets Grant at the flower market, he hands her a clipping of mistletoe, which Victoria knows to symbolize - I surmount all obstacles. Victoria then gives Grant snapdragon which symbolizes-presumption. Victoria’s feels fear and something new: a glimmer of hope as she realizes they both know the language of flowers.
The story alternates between Victoria’s post-emancipation life and her recollection of the most formative year of her life when, at age 10, Victoria is placed in a foster home north of San Francisco. Her new foster mother, Elizabeth, is single and lives in a house on a vineyard. After experiencing abuse and neglect, Victoria seems incapable of receiving love. Yet, the lush landscape of grapes, flowers, and endless sky offer possibility. Her new foster mother sets clear boundaries for Victoria. She cooks her delicious meals, pays attention to her, and treats her with compassion and respect. Victoria’s hardened heart begins to yield. She is finally being treated with respect, not like an unworthy foster kid.
Initially, it is difficult for Elizabeth and Victoria. Yet, Elizabeth knows the shame of rejection and abandonment. She too was neglected and received little love from her distant father and mentally ill mother. She perseveres due to the love of her older sister, Catherine, who now lives next door. This experience provides Elizabeth with empathy and understanding. She tells Victoria, “Nothing you could do would make me send you away. Nothing. So you can go on testing me, hurling my mother's silver around the kitchen, if that is what you have to do - but know that my response will always be the same: I will love you and I will keep you.”
Elizabeth teaches Victoria the turn-of-the-century practice of conveying emotion through flowers. This cryptic communication resonates with Victoria and she begins to share her emotions through flowers. Victoria asks Elizabeth the name of the flower for hate. Elizabeth retorts, “The flower you are looking for is clearly the common thistle, which symbolizes "misanthropy." Misanthropy means hatred or mistrust of humankind. Victoria responds, “No one had ever described my feelings in a single word.” Victoria quickly absorbs this new language and uses it to communicate her feelings to Elizabeth. Victoria settles into Elizabeth’s world and experiences the feeling of being loved. “I didn't want to go back. I liked Elizabeth I liked her flowers, her grapes, and her concentrated attention. Finally, I realized, I had found a place I wanted to stay.”
Yet trouble is brewing. The sisters have not spoken in 15 years. The silence emanating from Catherine’s house next door has wrapped itself like a vine around Elizabeth’s heart. She begs her sister to talk with her, but is met with silence. Her grief and despair take their toll on Elizabeth's relationship with Victoria. When the day comes for Elizabeth to adopt Victoria, Elizabeth panics. She does not get out of bed. She fears she cannot provide Victoria with the love and nurturing she never received. Emotional chaos ensues and Victoria does something shocking. The foster care system cannot make sense of what transpired. There is miscommunication and misunderstanding and the fragile possibility of a loving home evaporates. Victoria is sent back into the foster care system for eight more years. Her grief is overwhelming as Victoria knows Elizabeth loves her and yet, in her guilt and confusion, Victoria believes she deserves her fate.
I don’t want to spoil the many subplots. But during the year that Victoria lives with Elizabeth, the seeds of love and acceptance were planted in Victoria. They are not revealed for 10 more years and Victoria’s painful path is hard to observe. Yet, Victoria does change and learns to integrate a bit of the love and trust she learned from Elizabeth into her present life. When Victoria sees Elizabeth again after 10 years, she bring Elizabeth a huge bouquet of flowers. The flowers in the bouquet are: Flax – I feel your kindness; forget me not – forget me not; hazel - reconciliation; white rose - grace; pink rose - a heart acquainted with love; helenium - tears; periwinkle - tender recollections; primrose - childhood; and bellflower - gratitude. Victoria has grown and changed. She not only understands the language of flowers; she can now experience the feelings they symbolize.
The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards
I recently reread this wonderful novel by Kim Edwards published in 2005. The plot is straightforward, but the emotional dynamics are complex. It is 1964 in Louisville, Kentucky and Dr. David Henry and his wife Norah are expecting a baby. In the midst of a fierce storm, David and his nurse, Caroline Gill, deliver not one, but two babies. The first is a healthy boy Norah names Paul. Then, unexpectedly, another baby emerges. When David Henry realizes his daughter has Down’s Syndrome, he directs Caroline to take the girl to a home for disabled children. When Caroline protests, David says, “Don’t you see? This poor child will most likely have a serious heart defect. A fatal one. I’m trying to spare us all a terrible grief.” When Norah wakes, Caroline is driving to the Home for Feeble Minded Children. David tells Norah, “Oh my love. I am so sorry. Our little daughter died as she was born.”
This novel explores the consequences of making a decision, maybe even a well intentioned one, without understanding the ramifications of one’s motivations and feelings. David is intellectually gifted and compassionate toward others. Yet his emotional development has been stunted. He makes an impulsive decision and the rest of his life is tangled up in the implications of his choice. Every day he hopes to confess to Norah, but the months and then the years pass by. David's guilt and sorrow consume him. Norah's depression over the death of her daughter engulfs her. Paul grows angrier and angrier as his parents argue and then drift apart in silence. David says about his relationship with Paul, “The lie had grown up between them like a rock, forcing them to grow oddly too, like tress twisting around a boulder.” We also learn that Caroline did not leave the baby girl at the impersonal and uncaring institution. She instead left Louisville and raised Phoebe as her own daughter. She loves Phoebe and creates a happy and loving home for her. She informs David of her decision and sporadically sends letters telling him about their lives. He doesn't inquire how Phoebe is doing, but he does send money.
Sixteen years later, Caroline seeks out David to ask him about his most recent letter in which David asks Caroline if he can meet Phoebe. After their intense conversation, David takes a bus to the poor, small one room house where he was raised. Exhausted and distraught, he falls asleep and wakes up lying on a bed (or is it a couch?). A young pregnant girl named Rosemary is cooking at the stove. The painful memories of his youth overwhelm him and he confesses his secret to her. " I gave her away. She has Down's syndrome, which means she's retarded. I gave her away. I never told anyone. "She silently listens and David's emotional healing begins. We learn more about his beloved younger sister, June, who died of a heart defect at the age of twelve. The narrator says, “When June died he had no way to give voice to what had been lost, no real way to move on. It was unseemly, even, to speak of the dead in those days, so they had not.” He knew of his grief, but now decades later he experiences that grief within the crumbling walls of this structure. He remembers his sister gasping for breath as his parents and he watched helplessly. “This was the grief he had carried with him, heavy as a stone in his heart. This was the grief he had tried to spare Norah and Paul, only to create so much more.”
Kim Edwards packs plenty of other emotional episodes into this novel as each character changes in response to the presence of this unspoken secret. The Memory Keeper’s Daughter is a beautiful read and the resolution is satisfying for all those affected by David’s decision. In the end, it is not Phoebe who dies of a broken heart.
Some people can repress painful memories from their pasts. But most people’s repression capabilities are finite. At some point, a catalytic episode requires engagement with one’s demons. Edward’s novel gives readers an example of what can happen if painful feelings are repressed for too long.
My Father's Tears by John Updike
In my late 20’s, I read the first two novels of John Updike's Rabbit Run novels. Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom is a former basketball star bouncing between youth and adulthood in post WWII America. At age 26, Rabbit abandons his wife and young son and moves in with a prostitute. Updike depicts a world of immature characters, endless lust, serial adultery, and permanent personal isolation.
Though Updike’s writing captivated me, his characters angered me. They were neither wise nor mature. Updike did not seem to offer any insight for transcending the hollowness he describes. The books depressed me and I did not finish the series.
Twenty years later, I read The Maple Stories, published in 2009. Over three decades, Updike had written 18 stories about Joan and Richard Maple’s marriage and divorce. His detailed, clear sentences still amazed me. In these stories about the painful unraveling of the Maples’ marriage, Updike’s pen seemed less pointed. His characters were more appealing and there was a softer, gentler acknowledgement of their suffering. The story Separating, in particular, moved me.
The Maple Stories were on my mind when My Father’s Tears was published after Updike’s death in 2009. Unlike many authors I admire, Updike doesn’t focus on developing his characters’ psychological etiology. Clues about childhood development or traumatic experiences are not scattered in his stories. His books are not psychological in the ways that I appreciate.
Yet, in this last collection of stories, he beautifully captures the ruminations of an older man reflecting on his life. Yes, Updike’s constant themes of unfaithful spouses and sexual restlessness become irritating. However, these final stories focus more on his parents, grandparents, kids, and grandkids. He looks back where he came from and tells the stories that made him who he is. He describes recognizable events and makes them feel sacred.
In the title story, My Father’s Tears, Updike evokes the deep unspoken love of a father for his college bound son. They are saying good-bye at a train station. The son says, “…I was going somewhere, and he was seeing me go. I was growing in my own sense of myself, and to him I was getting smaller. He had loved me; it came to me as never before. It was something that had not needed to be said before, and now his tears were saying it. Before, in all the years and small adventures we had shared, there was the sensation stemming from him, that life was a pickle, and he and I were, for a time, in the pickle together.” This father knows that his son will not return home except to visit. The son continues, “But my father did foresee, the glitter in his eyes told me, the time consumes us--- that the boy I had been was dying if not already dead, and we would have less and less to do with each other. My life had come out of his, and now I was stealing away with it.”
My favorite story is Walking with Elizanne. It is the best story I have read about a high school reunion; in this case, that of David Kern, Updike’s alter ego. “Though the year 2000 inevitably figured in yearbook predictions and jokes, nobody had really believed that a year so futuristic would ever become the present. They were seventeen and eighteen; their fiftieth class reunion was impossibly remote. Now it was here, here in the function room of Fiorvante’s, a restaurant in West Alton, a half-mile from the stately city hospital where many of them had been born and now one of them lay critically ill.” Updike captures the determined denial of young people toward the inevitable passing of time. But would it have changed anything if David Kern and his classmates understood that their 50th reunion would quickly be upon them?
The most poignant line is when David encounters a woman at the reunion named Elizanne. She reminds David that he had once walked her home from their date and kissed her. As she describes that evening to him, he can’t recall it. Later he reflects on their conversation and remembers their date of 50 years ago. He says, “Elizanne, he wanted to ask her, what does it mean, this enormity of our having been children and being old, living next door to death?”
Updike’s ability, in a few sentences, to evoke emotion, capture places, and stimulate empathy is stunning. He does not offer a transcendent moment or resolution, but he offers his readers a moving experience. He is like a hiker who runs ahead to the top of the mountain and comes back to tell the rest of the hikers about the view from the peak. It’s not a perfect view, there are clouds in the sky and obstacles on the trail, but if we are lucky, that is where his readers are heading. His clear and haunting prose invites his readers to ponder the meaning of their lives before they reach a point where they cannot change paths. Updike does not have the answers, but he points out the signposts along the way.
