The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart

Product Information

But Alice understands flowers, having learned something of the language of flowers from her mother, and each chapter is introduced with the name of an Australian native flower and its description. After living between Australia and the UK for ten years, Holly has been based in the hinterland of Queensland since 2020, where she wrote The Seven Skins of Esther Wilding in her 'office', a vintage caravan named Frenchie. The reoccurring themes of fire, and the language of flower just overpowered everything good about this novel; it was repetitive, spoke to me in riddles at times and distracted me from the plot. When Alice's estranged paternal grandmother, June, arrives to claim custody of her, it becomes clear that there is more to the story than meets the eye. Alice is a Floriographer, a person fluent in the language of flowers and it was popular in the Victorian era, each bloom has a meaning, used to display emotions and feelings.

The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart (TV Mini Series 2023) - IMDb The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart (TV Mini Series 2023) - IMDb

The story follows Alice Hart, a young girl who becomes orphaned by a mysterious fire and moves in with her estranged grandmother, only to grow up and discover that there's more to her life story than she previously thought. And, yes, her maturity was obviously stunted by her childhood trauma and hindered by the environment she grew up in, but I had no patience for her behaviour, especially when she was fainting and wilting away at every turn of the page. There are times when the pace of “Alice Hart” can be glacial, but it’s worth being patient with its early chapters, which set the stage for a study of generational loss and the horrible mistakes people make in protecting loved ones.After reading this novel, which has left a strong imprint on my heart and mind, I can understand why it was auctioned off when it initially received many publishing offers. There's an aching heart beating through Holly Ringland's narrative that although at times seems almost broken, is stitched back together with shards of optimism that offer constant hope. But into this family drama seeps lots of other interesting themes including the healing power of nature, the dark aftermath of trauma and the cyclical nature of violence. As for the story itself, after a family tragedy, we follow Alice through a few metamorphoses as she finds new homes and tribes, so to speak. After her family suffers a tragedy, nine-year-old Alice Hart is forced to leave her idyllic seaside home.

The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart - Pan Macmillan

Under the watchful eye of June and the women who run the farm, Alice settles, but grows up increasingly frustrated by how little she knows of her family’s story. Prior to the pandemic, Holly divided her time between Australia and the UK, where she had Australian native flowers growing in both places. Pentru mine a fost o lectură splendidă, de la personajul lui Alice, care, în ciuda vocii timide și a aparentei fragilități, reușește să își construiască oricâte începuturi sunt necesare, până la pașii înceți cu care m-a plimbat autoarea prin viețile tuturor.The librarian, Sally, shows special care for Alice: the little girl reminds her of Gemma, Sally’s daughter, who died some years before.

The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart - Wikipedia The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart - Wikipedia

The scenes involving Alice’s coming of age in the flower farm were by far my favourite sections of the novel. The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart spans twenty years, you follow Alice growing up and a unique coming of age story, as an adult and she doesn’t want to make the same mistakes as her mother.

Holly Ringland has captured the essence of Australia, and I have no hesitation in recommending The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart highly. There she adopts a puppy, finds work as a national park ranger and immerses herself in a very different way of life to that which came before, but one in which she finally believes she’s found long and lasting happiness.

The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart - Holly Ringland - The Review: The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart - Holly Ringland - The

In the weatherboard house at the end of the lane, nine-year-old Alice Hart sat at her desk by the window and dreamed of ways to set her father on fire. The plot surely needs to be explained, and a full recap is necessary: what happened in the fire that killed her parents, Clem and Agnes? It takes real skill to balance the careful dichotomy between sadness and hope, but Ringland gets it just right.Holly Ringland also has this very odd habit of introducing a character, not saying anything about what they look like except for their fingernails or their hair, and then 20 pages later they'll mention something about "white fellas" and you realise that said character is Aboriginal. I thought it was bad when books described attractive people as simply "he was the most beautiful man I had ever seen", but this is somehow even worse because the only thing I can picture is some kind of blank generic void wearing a hat and sunglasses.