The Language of Flowers

Best book this year, hands down.

Why?

1. Takes place in the Bay Area. If you have lived there, you will know the streets, the neighborhoods, the parks and the flower markets in San Francisco. You'll be able to picture the vineyard north of the City. You can feel the sun, smell the air, everything... It adds so much to your reading experience.

2. Lots of flowers. I'm a sucker for flowers. I loved this book, devoured these, and love my plant identification guides on my home bookshelf. Not only is this book about growing and selling flowers, but it's also about flowers on another level.

3. Nearly dead languages brought back to life--in the book, it's the Latin names of plants and the Victorian language of flowers. Witness the ongoing symbolism of the various flowers and names throughout the novel--you'll be constantly flipping to the dictionary of flowers and their Latin names that's conveniently tucked at the end of the novel.

4. A heroine who does not follow the rules of society. Way more interesting to read about than ordinary, law-abiding folks. And she's flawed in ways that are recognizable and inspire empathy.

5. A touch of the fantastical. An apartment with a half-sized door, a midwife with an eerie sense of what is about to happen...

6. Love. [sigh] No explanation needed.

The Borrower

Lucy Hull is a twenty-six year old Russian-American woman who graduated from Mount Holyoke with an English degree. At the end of college, she broke up with her boyfriend and systematically worked her way down a list of connections provided by the Career Development Office. That's how she ends up as the unlicensed children's librarian in a town in Missouri, working for an alcoholic director and feeling utterly alone.

p. 8: "At twenty-six I was the head children's librarian only because I was willing to work more hours than the other two (much older) women, Sarah-Ann and Irene, who seemed to see the library as some kind of volunteer work, like a soup kitchen.

'We're so lucky they give us their time,' said Loraine. Which was true, as they were often busy remodeling entire rooms. I was four years out of college, had started biting my nails again, and was down to two adult friends. I lived alone in an apartment two towns over. A simple maiden lady librarian."

Good, but I found I enjoyed the first third of the book far more than the remaining two thirds. Something about what could have been her standoffishness came across as a lack of character depth. She was so unknowing about why she was doing what she did that I had trouble following her actions with empathy--along the lines of, "if she doesn't know why she's doing what she's doing, then how can I understand her motives?" I spent time wishing that there was an omniscient narrator who could shed light on her views.

But still, it's definitely a good book and well worth the reading. Enjoy!

Skylight Confessions

This one has seeped into my brain like memories that aren't mine. Without a definite beginning or ending, I get a sense that I have always known pieces of this story, and I find myself pondering parts of this story without having a clear sense of where they came from--

It seems that Alice Hoffman's books do this to me. In The Ice Queen, I identified so fully with the protagonist that, occasionally on some mornings, half asleep in bed, I still find myself half dreaming that I have been hit by lightning and forever changed. It feel utterly natural in the moment, of course, although so often dreamlike morning thoughts sound like lunacy in daylight.

In this book, young Arlyn, raw from her father's death, decides that she will marry the next man who walks down the street, not simply out of necessity or loneliness, but because she declares that he "will be my one love and I will be true to him as long as he's true to me." So when Yale architecture student John Moody pulls up in his car asking for directions, her path becomes clear and her resolve unshakable.

Years later, it's clear that Arlyn and John have a terrible but complex relationship, a son named Sam with disturbing emotional issues, and a daughter named Blanca upon whose shoulders so much responsibility for family cohesiveness rests. They all live in John's family's house named the Glass Slipper, a giant architectural wonder made all of glass.

What I have told you here is merely a stepping stone for the rest of the story.

p. 30: "Watching John in the half-light of spring, with his jacket off and his sleeves rolled up, Arlyn remembered how she had felt the first time she saw him, back when he was lost and she was so dead set on finding him."

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake: a novel

Amazing. Best book I've read so far this year, hands down.

As soon as I brought it back, I recommended it to a patron, and bam! it's checked out. So you'll have to wait until it's checked in again for the shortlist of delicious quotes I want to share with you.

20th Century Ghosts

Read it for a book group. Meh...

Christopher Golden (who wrote the introduction) called it "subtle," but I'd call it

Where the God of Love Hangs Out

This is a series of interconnected short stories that I just wasn't ready to read. I like Bloom's style, but some of her characters were off-putting, in the way that I almost want to dissect them to figure out what exactly it is about them that's so distasteful--perhaps it's something I need to explore further.

The set of characters that bothered me most were William and Clare. Although they have both been happily married to other people for decades, they are seemingly unable to resist each other now. William is grotesquely obese and superbly spoiled and Clare can't stop thinking that William's wife Isabel is a better wife to him than she is as his mistress.

Why can't I find empathy with either character? I like to think that I'm an empathetic and open-minded adult, but I'm hitting a wall here. Is it the affair? I don't think that reading about an affair necessarily turns me off from the characters--I did enjoy Emily Giffin's fictional foray into affairs in Heart of the Matter. Is it because the characters are old? Or maybe because they're not attractive or young? Or because their spouses are portrayed as so decidedly good. I may have to revisit this book in a few years to see if I can accept the characters, foibles and all, in the future.

From a later story in the book, a brother is talking about his brother's relationship:
p. 116: "My brother married someone more beautiful and wild than I would have chosen. They had terrible, flying-dishes fights and passionate reconciliations every few months, and they managed to divorce and remarry in one year, without even embarrassing themselves. Jewelle loved Buster to death and told me she only left when he needed leaving, and my brother would say in her defense that it was nothing less than the truth. He never said what he had done that would deserve leaving, and I can't think that it was anything very bad. There is no bad even in the depths of Buster's soul, and when I am sick of him, his undaunted, fat-and-sassy younger brotherness, I think that there are no depths.

And finally, from one of the last stories, about the aftermath of a murder:
p. 177-178: "I don't miss the dead less, I miss them more. I miss the tall pines around Lake Pleasant, I miss the brown-and-gray cobblestones on West Cedar Street, I miss the red-tailed hawks that fly so often in pairs. I miss the cheap red wine in a box and I miss the rum and Coke. I miss Anne's wet gold hair drying as we sat on the fire escape. I miss the hot-dog luau and driving to dance lessons after breakfast at Bruegger's Bagels. I miss the cold mornings on the farm, when the handle of the bucket bit into my small hands and my feet slid over the frozen dew. I miss the hot grease spattering around the felafel balls and the urgent clicking of Hebrew. I miss the new green leaves shaking in the June rain. I miss standing on my father's shiny shoes as we danced to 'The Tennessee Waltz' and my mother made me a paper fan so I could flirt like a Southern belle, tapping my nose with the fan. I miss every piece of my dead. Every piece is stacked high like cordwood within me, and my heart, both sides, and all four parts, is their reliquary."