The Florist's Daughter
by Patricia Hampl
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Book Summary Information
Author: Patricia HamplEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2007-10-01
ISBN: 0151012571
Number of pages: 240
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Book Reviews of The Florist's Daughter
Book Review: A rich, rewarding meditation
Summary: 4 Stars
Patricia Hampl's newest memoir, THE FLORIST'S DAUGHTER, opens with an indelible image. The author sits in her mother's hospital room. At her side lies her mother, who has suffered a serious stroke and is expected to die at any moment. In her lap lies a yellow notepad, on which Hampl is composing her own mother's obituary. For Hampl, whose way of dealing with the contradictions and complexities in her life has always been to write about them (in memoirs such as A ROMANTIC EDUCATION), writing a mini-biography of her mother even as the woman lays dying seems a fitting image.
Of course, as Hampl extends her mother's obituary beyond the mere facts and figures of a long, full life, she casts her mind back to her own memories of her mother, to those mundane but unforgettable kitchen-table moments that form the bulk of memories but are unlikely to appear in any sort of formal obituary.
Almost immediately, Hampl sets up a contrast between her mother, a biography-reading, pragmatic library clerk who balances the family's checkbook down "to the penny." Fond of telling cautionary tales and of reading her horoscope (her astrological sign and its accompanying personality traits cause Hampl to dub her mother "Leo the Lion"), Hampl's mother is an Irish Catholic, ironic, cautious and distrustful. Hampl muses that she may have inherited her own penchant for writing from time spent with her mother, who has the gift of remembering --- and describing in minute detail --- every aspect of the glamorous parties she sometimes attends. Hampl's mother certainly has a writer's eye, even if the only thing she ever published were vitriolic letters to the editor of the St. Paul Pioneer Press.
Or perhaps Hampl inherited her craft from her father, a quiet "man of many projects" but few words, a florist whose artistic eye, naïveté and utter lack of practicality made for beautiful floral arrangements but occasionally bad business decisions. Born into a family of Czech immigrants, Hampl's father learned both the greenhouse trade and eventually flower arranging as a young man, and excelled at both, particularly as he created whimsical, unforgettable arrangements for high-society functions: "He wanted a certain kind of formal, purchased beauty to exist, and especially for this elegance to mean something --- something good, something hopeful."
In addition to these two dynamic characters, and the background presence of Hampl herself in their lives, the city of St. Paul also plays a key role in Hampl's memoir. Set in a time between Fitzgerald's tales of the city's robber barons and mansions and the more diverse population of today, Hampl's St. Paul is simultaneously romantic (especially when set in contrast with its more staid sibling, Minneapolis) and stifling to a young woman who just wants to experience the Great World.
In THE FLORIST'S DAUGHTER this setting, family history and personal memoir intersect to make for a rich, rewarding meditation on how we become the people we are, why we end up where we live, why we make the choices we do. Hampl's story is at once intensely personal and surprisingly universal, as her reflections on what it means to be a lifelong child of one's parents have implications for almost all her readers.
--- Reviewed by Norah Piehl
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