Book Review: THE LOST FLOWERS OF ALICE HART by Holly Ringland

Title: The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart

Author: Holly Ringland
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Australia
Read: March 2018

My Rating:🌟🌟🌟1/2

Book Description:

After her family suffers a tragedy when she is nine years old, Alice Hart is forced to leave her idyllic seaside home. She is taken in by her estranged grandmother, June, a flower farmer who raises Alice on the language of Australian native flowers, a way to say the things that are too hard to speak. But Alice also learns that there are secrets within secrets about her past. Under the watchful eye of June and The Flowers, women who run the farm, Alice grows up. But an unexpected betrayal sends her reeling, and she flees to the dramatically beautiful central Australian desert. Alice thinks she has found solace, until she falls in love with Dylan, a charismatic and ultimately dangerous man.

The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart is a story about stories: those we inherit, those we select to define us, and those we decide to hide. It is a novel about the secrets we keep and how they haunt us, and the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive. Spanning twenty years, set between the lush sugar cane fields by the sea, a native Australian flower farm, and a celestial crater in the central desert, Alice must go on a journey to discover that the most powerful story she will ever possess is her own.

My musings:

The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart is a bittersweet and enchanting coming-of age story exploring a young woman’s ability to overcome childhood trauma and the legacy of forbidden love and loss passed on from generations of women before her.

Alice Hart has been growing up with a volatile, often violent father and her quiet, shy mother on a remote coastal property in a tropical region of NE Australia. Forbidden to venture into town or go to school, her only friends are her dog Toby and the fictional characters out of the books her father occasionally brings home for her from the town library. Her mother, bruised and battered from her husband’s violent outbursts, finds solace in her garden, where she teaches Alice the magical language of the flowers growing there in abundance. One day, after a particularly bad rage, an unthinkable tragedy happens, one that will leave Alice an orphan and change her life forever.

Now first of all – take a moment to admire this stunning cover! Isn’t it gorgeous? The images of the Australian native flowers featured here are what first drew me to this book, as it is so rare to find novels that do justice to the unique Australian flora, let alone use it as characters in their stories. The flowers and plants Ringland has chosen all feature prominently in the story, each highlighting an aspect of Alice’s life as she grows up surrounded by the wild beauty of the Australian bush. If I had any fears that Ringland’s novel would be simply an Australian version of Vanessa Diffenbaugh’s The Language of Flowers, I was soon reassured, because Alice’s story is unique and unusual. I loved the chapter headings describing the hidden meaning of different Australian plants, and could picture June’s garden vividly in my mind, as the lush paradise it is described as. The setting of this story is vivid and enchanting, and I felt myself transported into a magical landscape that is home to Alice in her formative years.

Ringland tells her story in three quite distinctive parts: one of Alice as a child, from early childhood to the tragedy that will cost her parents’ lives; one of her years of growing up in Thornfeld, the lush wildflower farm that has been home to generations of Hart women; and one of Alice as an adult woman, trying to find her own path in life. I admit that I was most invested in the chapters set at Thornfeld, partly due to its enchanted setting, but also because I found the story of Thornfeld’s women intriguing. The idea of generations of women passing on the secret language of the flowers they are surrounded by was interesting and strangely touching, especially as we learn of each individual woman’s fate, their friendships and the way they looked out for one another in the sanctuary of Thornfeld. I could have happily remained in Thornfeld for the entirety of the story! I admit that my interest waned slightly in the later part of the book, despite its unique desert setting, but I felt that the initial thread of the “language of flowers” got a bit lost here, with more focus on Alice’s struggle with relationships. After becoming so enchanted with Thornfeld and its women, I felt I wanted to read more about them and their lives, and would have liked to see a resolution in the relationship dynamics uncovered in their stories.

   

Summary:

The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart is a touching coming of age story featuring three very unique and stunning Australian locations that will enchant readers from all over the world. Spanning twenty years of Alice’s life, the story will appeal to readers who enjoy saga novels in atmospheric, exotic places – this is armchair travel of the best kind! I look forward to reading more from this author in future.

Thank you to Netgalley and HarperCollins Australia for the free electronic copy of this novel and for giving me the opportunity to provide an honest review.