The Language of Flowers and Maple Doughnuts

Posted: 10 Oct 2013 bookcooker

The Language of Flowers is a book with a heroine that loves to eat, so there were many many options presented for bookcooker.  Perhaps if it was another season I would have selected another type of food that Victoria voraciously ate (roast chicken, homemade ice cream, peanut butter muffin), but since I read the book as autumn sets in, I knew immediately as I read the words that I had to make maple doughnuts Who can resist maple donuts?  

While these donuts are fluffy and sweet, The Language of Flowers is a book about serious issues - foster care, homelessness, trust issues.  While these serious issues are the focus of the book, I must admit, in some ways the book reads a bit fluffy - there is a lightness to it that makes it feel a bit like one of those 80's after school specials - tough stuff turned into soap opera.   Despite that criticism, I really enjoyed the book but maybe felt a little guilty reading it.  Just like how I felt after eating one of those doughnuts.

Vanessa Diffenbaugh's The Language of Flowers is a very good first novel.  The book tells the story of Victoria - a girl who was abandoned by her mother at birth and grows up in the foster care system.  
The book is split into two time periods and Diffenbaugh interweaves the narratives together - Victoria when she is 9 years old and sent to live with a foster mother, Elizabeth, on a northern California vineyard and Victoria when she is 18, out of the foster care system and trying to make it one her own in San Francisco.  As a child, Victoria is a little bit wild and steadfastly refuses to trust anyone - these traits stay with her as she becomes adult.  While she as at Elizabeth's vineyard,  Victoria starts to learn about the old Victorian art - the language of flowers.  Each flower or plant has a special meaning - honeysuckle means fidelity, thistle means misanthropy.  Victoria catches on to the language of flowers and begins to express herself and her feelings for Elizabeth.  
While Victoria settles in with Elizabeth and real bonds form between them, we know things do not turn out well because of where Victoria ends up at 18 - emancipated, homeless without any family or connections to support her.  Diffenbaugh creates suspense in this manner for the story of the 9 year old Victoria - we know something goes wrong and the novel builds up to this.  As an 18 year old, Victoria lives on the street, but eventually finds a job with a spunky Russian florist - Renata - and arranges bouquets according to the language of flowers.  
Victoria does not pick what might be pretty but picks flowers that meet the needs of the customer - flowers that will spice up a marriage, bring love to a lonely woman, bring forgiveness to a broken relationship.  While working with Renata Victoria runs into Elizabeth's nephew Grant, who runs a flower farm that was next to Elizabeth's vineyard.  Despite her resistance to it, Victoria falls for Grant, and much drama ensues.  I really enjoyed the book and found it hard to put down.  It seemed a bit manipulative of my emotions and as I said above, a similar to an after-school special - but what elevated it for me was the inclusion of the language of flowers.  I was really intrigued with this old method of using flowers to express your emotions and made the book really unique.

 Maple Glazed Doughnuts, from Saveur Magazine
(prinable recipe)