Loading...
150th out of 186 books
—
52 voters
[x]
Could not find that book.
My rating:
add to my books
The Florist's Daughter
During the long farewell of her mothers Daughter is a tribute to the ardor of supposedly ordinary people. Its concerns reach beyond a single life to achieve a historic testament to midcentury middle America. At the heart of this book is the humble passion of people who struggled out of the Depression into a better chance, not only for themselves but for the common good. Wi...more
Hardcover, 240 pages
Published
October 1st 2007
by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
There is a good chance some of your friends read this book. Sign in to see!
sign in »
Friend Reviews
To see what your friends thought of this book,
please sign up.
Community Reviews
(showing
1-30
of
677)
Daisy
rated it
·
review of another edition
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
sent to Lara; Steve and Shana for the flowers and St. Paul
Did she ever get her way? Not then, not during her sweetheart period, not till later when she mastered the fine art of being impossible. p. 11
This is a beautifully written, intricately structured memoir in honor of the writer's parents. She deciphers who her parents were and who she became because of them in episodes so poetic, I think she labored over every single word. Because of the title, I thought this would be more about her father, the florist, but there's equal time spent ...more
This is a beautifully written, intricately structured memoir in honor of the writer's parents. She deciphers who her parents were and who she became because of them in episodes so poetic, I think she labored over every single word. Because of the title, I thought this would be more about her father, the florist, but there's equal time spent ...more
view all 4 comments
It'd be 3.5 stars.
Hampl has a dreamy writing-style that seemed especially appropriate as she sat at her dying mother's bedside in the hospital.
Hampl spends these "dead of the night" hours remembering how she ended up there - the daughter of a Czech florist and a library archivist Irish mother.
She jumps from place to place in her history examining her relationship with her parents, as their primary caretaker. She never really left St. Paul, always felt boun...more
Hampl has a dreamy writing-style that seemed especially appropriate as she sat at her dying mother's bedside in the hospital.
Hampl spends these "dead of the night" hours remembering how she ended up there - the daughter of a Czech florist and a library archivist Irish mother.
She jumps from place to place in her history examining her relationship with her parents, as their primary caretaker. She never really left St. Paul, always felt boun...more
I enjoy memoirs. It’s fun for me to read about people with more interesting lives than mine. However, I think writing a memoir poses a challenge, and also involves some risk. How many aspiring writers out there have jotted down ordinary journal entries and sent them in for publication, hoping for a big break? Where do you draw the line between personal disclosure and good storytelling? FYI: pouring your soul into the page doesn’t necessarily make for good writing.
That’s what someone...more
That’s what someone...more
This is a modest little book, but exquisitely written. Patricia Hampl is a poet as well as prose writer, and it shows. I was very touched by, and I personally related to, the relationship of the grown author and her aging parents. Long ago I read her "Romantic Education" and now I remember that it was the beauty of the writing that made me love it so much. This quote is from her thinking back on schoolgirl days:
"Only poetry and music, it seemed, could express th...more
"Only poetry and music, it seemed, could express th...more
I would give this memoir four stars for the beautifully written prose but have to back my rating down to the overall effect and missing connection to the characters.
Written in honor of the authors parents my heart felt for this daughter. I related to much of her feelings of living in the shadows for much of her life growing up. The descriptions of location and emotion were vivid yet lacked a personal resonance with me. I understood her distance with the mother and ached for her co...more
Written in honor of the authors parents my heart felt for this daughter. I related to much of her feelings of living in the shadows for much of her life growing up. The descriptions of location and emotion were vivid yet lacked a personal resonance with me. I understood her distance with the mother and ached for her co...more
I checked this book out of the library based on a great review and it IS extremely well written. I began the memoir and was immediately drawn in by its unique poetic style. The characterization of the author's brilliant, hard edged, Irish-Catholic mother is priceless. But, the sudden shift to a focus on the author's father (the florist) and the author's stingy rememberances of herself as a child left me restless and I gave up on this one.
Bookmarks Magazine
added it
"Nothing is harder to grasp than the relentlessly modest life," observes Patricia Hampl, the award-winning author of several memoirs. In The Florist's Daughter, she turns the focus from herself to her parents and their ordinary lives. Resisting the impulse to be sentimental, she "homes in on the unguarded moment, the pivot of contradiction, that reveals character" (Newsday) and brings Stan and Mary Hampl to vivid life in her lovely prose and breathtaking metaphors. Critics no
...more
Kathie
added it
Intereseting memoir. Telling the story of living in the Twin Cities. comparing the ethnic culture of the Norwegians of Mpls. and the Irish Catholic of St. Paul; along with all the different neighborhoods, historic buildings, and difficulties of living in this era.
I coud relate to this quote: "I opened the door to the rest of my life, this new life without a living link to the old world, and he said, as if he knew all about me, "Well, now that's the end of an era for you."...more
I coud relate to this quote: "I opened the door to the rest of my life, this new life without a living link to the old world, and he said, as if he knew all about me, "Well, now that's the end of an era for you."...more
Maybe I need to try reading this again in a few months. I had high expectations and was very disappointed. I thought I would be able to realate to this character/author more, but the book really bored me - I had trouble finishing it. The author discusses her "common" upbringing by "common" parents as she sits by her mother's deathbed while writing Mom's obituary. I seems Dad was a hardworking and well respected "florist" and mom worked in a library and liked to ...more
I think I've mentioned numerous times that I'll read pretty much any memoir that comes my way. I saw this on the new book shelf at the library and brought it home based on simply on the facts that it was a memoir, and I used to work in a flower shop. What comes home with me from the library has a very low bar to cross.
Anyway, I loved this book. This author is a wonderful, wonderful writer. It is instantly clear that she is a poet as her lovely and lyrical writing shines from ever...more
Anyway, I loved this book. This author is a wonderful, wonderful writer. It is instantly clear that she is a poet as her lovely and lyrical writing shines from ever...more
An interesting book, nothing exciting. Well-written story of some of Patricia Hampl's upbringing. It is more about her parents and their values than about herself, the Florist's Daughter. Some of the later chapters on her parents' decline and the numerous doctor visits and changing of residence to accommodate her parents' declining health are hard to read since I'm going through that with my parents. I didn't find much helpful or comforting insight. I grew up on the Minneapolis side of the ...more
I chose this book because of the reviews praising Hampl's prose as otherworldly, as something one would not expect out of a memoir written in 2007. The Florist's Daughter does not disappoint. It is about everything and nothing; a collection of Hampl's memories and instances that tied together Irish and Czech heritage while she was growing up in St. Paul, MN in the 50's and 60's. We begin with Hampl clutching the hand of her dying mother while with her free hand, writing her obituary. Like he...more
Hampl's use of language is beautiful, but there's a subtle tone of "I know I use language beautifully" that I can't get past. I want to read another of her books to see if it was this subject matter or if I need to figure out where my bias is coming from. Many people who I respect think Hampl is wonderful, so it might be me.
The book was good, it kept me wanting more. It's a tale of her mother and father and her childhood and she is blunt when using the beautiful descriptors. He...more
The book was good, it kept me wanting more. It's a tale of her mother and father and her childhood and she is blunt when using the beautiful descriptors. He...more
I think the words were put together in an interesting way. Since I just finished it I will take something from the end. Pg 205-206 "In the Cake Bible ...like lavander stars caught up in the creamist swath of the Milky Way."
However reading this was too much like homework. Was it becuase it was from the point of dying looking back? Or maybe because I felt bounced around in time. Something that was learned later in life was mentioned in the in the context of childhood.
...more
However reading this was too much like homework. Was it becuase it was from the point of dying looking back? Or maybe because I felt bounced around in time. Something that was learned later in life was mentioned in the in the context of childhood.
...more
This is Hampl's fifth (!) memoir, a meditation upon her parents and her relationship with them. Hampl grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota and (according to this book) never left. She cared for her parents through multiple illnesses. Her father died of heart failure, her mother eventually of a number of illnesses, dementia finally obliterating much of her ability to relate to the real world, something that Hample took in her stride. Hampl's memoir is not of the confessional variety --- there are f...more
AS far as memoirs go, this was enjoyable. Hampl has written other memoirs, this one happens to tell about her relationship with her parents and her reflections on "no longer being a daughter" after both have passed away.
My mother believed "that words were everything. They could go anywhere, be anything. They got you to the Great World without a ticket."
"The world is eternally embattled, good and evil contend, people burn. Life's no party, no m...more
My mother believed "that words were everything. They could go anywhere, be anything. They got you to the Great World without a ticket."
"The world is eternally embattled, good and evil contend, people burn. Life's no party, no m...more
This refreshing memoir tells the story of ordinary lives--ordinary in the fact that no one in the book is famous, drug-addled, or suffers undue hardship. What's remarkable about Hampl's story of her parents' lives is how extraordinary it is. They may not have been millionaires, celebrities, or war heroes, but they were good people and good parents, and that fact alone makes them worthy of writing and reading about. Inspiring.
I checked this book out of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh after finishing "I Could Tell You Stories," and enjoyed it during a trip back to Minnesota to visit family this spring. Hampl's descriptions of Old St. Paul remind me of all of the best parts of the city, and open a window into the time before I-94 and 35E were routed through its neighborhoods, and into the lives of Czech and Irish immigrants and their families during the midcentury.
What pretty, pretty writing, telling such a soft story. It's funny that the quintessential American novels so often turn out to be memoirs. She captures the depression-era children in adulthood and the end of the gentility of old families with old money in new cities--and she does it with such beautiful language.
This is not so much a captivating book as a charming one. I was sorry when it was finished.
This is not so much a captivating book as a charming one. I was sorry when it was finished.
The Florist's Daughter was a hard read for me! "A nothing-happened narrative, our kind of story." The author kept circling around the same subjects, beating a dead horse so to speak, to the point I felt like she was soon going to take me straight to her or my own insanity. Poetic or not where we were headed didn't feel like a healthy place. We seemed incredibly stuck in things we couldn't change like heritage, where we grew up and how our parents see the world. I couldn't understan...more
This is a memoir contrasting between Hampl's childhood in St. Paul and scenes of Hampl dealing with her parents' illnesses and deaths. Hampl grew up in St. Paul in the 1950s, before the highways arrived and made the connections between the Twin Cities easier. Minneapolis and St. Paul were divided into two very different worlds: the Scandinavian, Lutheran city of Minneapolis and the Catholic world of St. Paul where one identified their neighborhood by stating which parish they attended. Hampl's f...more
Morgan
rated it
Recommends it for:
If you like memoirs or nonfiction locale stories
Recommended to Morgan by:
Bonnie's book
Memoir. A wonderful evocation of pre-turnpike St. Paul, MN, and the ethnic communities and rich - middle - poor families. At first I was bored--she seemed distanced from her story, but at the book went on, she drew closer (or maybe I did) and became more poetic. Raised in me questions about my own childhood and feelings of being a outsider.
I'll read it again.
I'll read it again.
I really like this book a lot. Hampl writes beautifully, and the depiction of her relationships with each of her parents rings true. I also identified with some of her struggles to understand her mother. My favorite aspect of the book was the description of of various locations in St. Paul. I could picture most of them, and that added to my enjoyment of the book.
I liked this book a lot. Though its pace seemed slow in the beginning, I enjoyed the time I spent in the author's world, and realized thoughtful might be a better word to describe the book. This memoir from a writer who came of age in the 60s is a beautiful history and portrait of the family she loves. It's down-to-earth, lovely, and striking.
The book started off with Patricia Hampl at her mother's bedside. The first third to half was dedicated to just being by that bedside. I liked how it started off that way, made it interesting, but for such a short book, there was too much emphasis on that. I'm fine with a certain percentage of a book being dreary, but this one had too much of it. And I thought it might have a little more to do with a flower shop of some kind, a little more on a parent (this one being the father) being a florist ...more
Patricia Hampl does amazing things with "airy nothings." Musing on a yellow legal pad during her mother's dying night, she reveals her St. Paul family with perceptive detail. The city becomes a character; her florist father, one of its heros. I enjoyed learning about St. Paul history from Hampl's Irish /Czech past.
Loved the language, but wasn't drawn in by the characters at all. I couldn't relate to the main woman and her parental woes. My boyfriend, on the other hand, adored the memoir for its language and description, and wasn't bothered by a lack of connection to the characters. A difference between male and female readers perhaps? Perhaps.
I really enjoyed this book. She a great writer and it's a very well written, suprising and touching memoir of her parents. I read this book based on the NYTimes review so I'll quote a bit of it here, "...Hampl’s honest examination of her own life makes “The Florist’s Daughter” a wonder of a memoir. A conflicted daughter, a begrudging Midwesterner and a woman who has been besotted by illusions, Hampl proves that the material closest to home is often the richest. Her mother, who complained th...more
This book was okay. The beginning started out much more interesting than the rest of the book ended up being. I guess I just got tired of so much musing on things and life and no story being told. I loved some of her phrases and descriptions. Especially about being a daughter. Though, overall, just kind of a meh book for me.
This book is beautifully written.
I just wish the subject matter had been different. I was immediately in love when I started it and got sucked in with the language and style of writing. But that only lasted through the description of the author's sharp edged mother and her mother's relationships with the people and places around her. When the father (the florist) was finally introduced, the climate shifted and it was hard going. Even though this is a memoir and the title includ...more
I just wish the subject matter had been different. I was immediately in love when I started it and got sucked in with the language and style of writing. But that only lasted through the description of the author's sharp edged mother and her mother's relationships with the people and places around her. When the father (the florist) was finally introduced, the climate shifted and it was hard going. Even though this is a memoir and the title includ...more
There are no discussion topics on this book yet.
Be the first to start one »
Readers Also Enjoyed
Patricia Hampl’s most recent book is The Florist’s Daughter, winner of numerous “best” and “year end” awards, including the New York Times “100 Notable Books of the Year” and the 2008 Minnesota Book Award for Memoir and Creative Nonfiction. Blue Arabesque: A Search for the Sublime, published in 2006 and now in paperback, was also one of the Times Notable Books; a portion was chosen for The Best Sp...more
More about Patricia Hampl...
Share This Book
No trivia or quizzes yet. Add some now »
“I waste my life. I want to. It's the thing to do with a life. We were wrong about work--it isn't the best thing, no matter how much you love it. Wasting time is better.”
—
5 people liked it
More quotes…
