The Language of Flowers / Hard Times

 The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh

Victoria, raised in foster and group homes, turns 18 and is left to fend for herself. She'd had one good year, living with Elizabeth, a wise and compassionate woman who loved her and was going to adopt her until things went awry. Elizabeth taught her about gardening, the types and names of flowers, and what they needed to flourish, knowledge Victoria used to start a small garden of her own even while she was homeless and sleeping under bushes in parks. 

She replies to an ad for a florist's helper and gets the job working for Renata, who sees in her something special and worth mentoring. One early morning at the flower market she meets Grant who becomes first a friend and then something more. Though things are better for Victoria now, the behaviours and attitudes learned from long years of neglect and abuse have a way to throwing a wrench into her best intentions. 

The Language of Flowers is a grittier story than the title implies. Sometimes your heart breaks for Victoria, other times you want to shake her and tell her to stop shooting herself in the foot. She's her own worst enemy, but aren't we all, and you find yourself commiserating instead of judging.

The sad and sometimes harsh story line is relieved by the conversations about flowers, their care and various meanings. Bouquets and individual blossoms are often exchanged to communicate thoughts and feelings, enriching the story and lifting it from despair to beauty. It is a beautiful novel.

The Language of Flowers is about family and flowers and how any of us, no matter how rough a start, can with enough care and attention grow into what we were meant to be.   

Hard Times by Charles Dickens

Audio narrated by Frederick Davidson. 11 hrs 29 mins.

The story of a no-nonsense schoolmaster who insists that his students and his own children be taught a certain way: "Now, what I want is Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts." But after he marries his daughter off to a man she doesn't love and then she falls for someone else, and his son does the unthinkable bringing shame to his whole family, he begins to realize that people may need more than mere facts to prepare them for happy and productive lives. 

Dickens is one of my favourites. I love the language of his times and his politely worded jabs at pretentious people, but this story didn't appeal to me even a little bit. It may have been partly the narration, but I couldn't get invested in any of the characters and found the plot dull, though it may be blasphemy to even suggest it. 

Sorry, Mr. Dickens. 

Klara and The Sun/Pack Up The Moon

 Klara and The Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

Within the first few pages you get a sense of something being not quite right. Through a comment here and a description there, a picture starts to form of what is going on behind the scenes, and though you may want to laugh it off as just fiction, something in you knows we're not that far away from becoming the society the book portrays.

Klara is an AF, an Artificial Friend, a companion parents buy for their teenage children. Klara's teenager is Josie, whose mother is still working in spite of most jobs being done now by AI, and whose father lives in a community of those who have already been replaced. Klara's purpose is to be as much help to Josie as she can, at the same time obeying the instructions of Josie's mother. Josie is unwell and Klara wants nothing more than to see her get better and is convinced The Sun can heal her with its "special nourishment."

In this near-future society parents must choose by a certain age whether or not to have their children genetically enhanced to give them an advantage in education and in life, even though some of the "uplifted" children suffer weakened health as a result. Klara's sister died after enhancement so choosing that path for Josie was risky, but her parents didn't want to deny her the chance at a better future. They also couldn't face the loss of another child, but perhaps a way could be found to  keep Josie with them even if she did succumb to the illness. Cue eerie music here. 

Next door to Josie live Rick and his mother. Rick is not one of the lifted but he's smart and talented enough for his mother to try to get him into a school that usually will take only enhanced students. Rick and Josie are best friends with a long term plan for their lives together and one of Klara's responsibilities is to act as chaperone so the adults have that one thing less to worry about. 

I enjoy Kishiguro's writing, the spare, straightforward language and the uneasy tone he creates. The characters live the lives they must while the reader grows quietly horrified and yet can't look away; it's all too probable.  

This book and another of Ishiguro's, Never Let Me Go, have never let me go. Both left me wondering if it really must come to this, and isn't there something we should do to make sure it doesn't, while knowing that it's probably too late to stop the AI avalanche that's already gathering speed and power as it thunders towards us. It's the matter-of-fact acceptance of it all in the novels and in our real world that make these scenarios so chilling, yet both books are terrific and I wouldn't want to not have read them. In fact, I will probably read them again.  

Klara and The Sun is a book you can't put down, an unsettling story about what it means to be human and how far we could/should go in our quest to make machines human, too.   

Pack Up the Moon by Kristin Higgins

A young husband, Josh, struggles with grief after losing his wife to idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. A few weeks after the funeral he receives the first of her letters - there'll be one for each month of his first year without her - assigning him tasks she hopes will help him get out and start living again. It's a terribly sad love story that will probably leave you in tears, but I didn't find it offered much beyond an opportunity to cry. If that's what you need - and who doesn't sometimes - you might love it.  

Away

 Away by Jane Urquhart

A haunting story of Irish immigrants fleeing the potato famine and building a new life in Canada, haunting in that it stays with you and in the supernatural aspect of it. 

Young Mary is so captivated by a sailor washed up on shore that she changes her name to his last whispered word: Moira. After he dies, he continues to appear to her. For a time she withdraws  into her own thoughts and imaginings of him, with the older folks saying in hushed voices that she's "away", a term used to describe someone who's been taken by the spirits or faeries or whatever it is they believe "takes" people.  

For a while she comes back from wherever she's been, marries, has children, and sets sail for Canada, but there the dead sailor calls to her from the water and she goes "away" again. In time, one of her children is also influenced by whatever force has his mother in its grasp. I think we are meant to find the spirituality in the novel beautiful but it had such a destructive effect on everyone around her that it was only tragic instead.  

The story covers several generations, going back and forth from Mary's time to that of her great-granddaughter, with the latter part of the book covering the years much more quickly. The writing is lovely and the story interesting in its portrayal of starting over in a new country with nothing - their first night in Canada was spent in the woods under a few branches for shelter - but I can't say I liked it. And yet there's something about it, a tone, a breathlessness the author creates by pulling you in and leaving you suspended there without answers, that tugs at me and makes me think about reading it again. 

Whether I do or not, I hope one of you will and then come back and tell me what you think about it. I'd love to hear your insights.

The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus

The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus by L. Frank Baum

One of the most charming origin stories of Santa I've read, rich in detail and filled with mythical creatures. 

In this tale of Santa Claus's life, he was abandoned as a baby, rescued by a fairy and raised in their beautiful, natural world among immortal beings until he reached an age where he was required to make a life for himself out in the world with his own kind. 

Grieved by the suffering he saw in human lives, he wished to do whatever he could to bring them a little happiness. He began making toys for the children nearby while teaching them the importance of being kind and helpful to those around us. More and more children came to his door as word spread until he was making so many toys that he needed a way of transporting them, especially to children who lived further away. So he built a sleigh.....and the story goes on from there until he is, at the end of many adventures, the Santa of legend.

Published in 1902, it seems this has been a popular book for many years but it somehow never appeared on my radar. I am glad it finally did because I wouldn't have wanted to miss it. A delightful read.