Flower Factory: A Fairy Tale

by Richard Foster

Freedom of Movement wasn’t always an alien concept to the British. Flower Factory tells of an English seasonal worker going to live and work in the Netherlands at the turn of the millennium. These psyched-out remembrances
are set in the Bollenstreek of South Holland, an area that produces flower bulbs by the billion. Casual workers from all over Europe created their own ecosystem of squats, parties and alternative living practices around the working seasons, raving hard and living for the weekly pay packet. In the year 2000 it seemed nothing would change in this free-and-easy land, but the narrator witnessed the last beating of the 24 Hour Party drum.

Genres: Fiction

224 pages, Paperback

Published June 7, 2022

Reviews

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

Since Malta is a small island, a good number of people visit European countries either to work as a translator, to try make it ‘big’ in the art scene or, simply to find acceptance of sorts: popular destinations over the years have been Prague, Brussels/Luxembourg and London. I’m recounting this because in 2000 music critic Richard Foster left Britain for the Netherlands (and he still lives there today).

In short Flower factory is a memoir. Richard Foster recounts many anecdotes pertaining to his early days there: two jobs involving packing flower bulbs, eccentric characters, the cringey Dutch radio tunes, seedy (no pun intended) clubs, various girlfriends and misadventures with bicycles , caravans and the dichotomy of being a guest and a permanent resident.

What differentiates Flower Factory from any other memoir is that it captures more innocent times: This is a world pre Brexit, pre 911, no recessions, pre mass construction, where people attended illegal raves. Having visited The Netherlands in 2018, it is a different country from the one described in the book: the stress being on different, not better.

I’ve always held that Europeans, have a certain eccentricity attached to their characters and Flower Factory cements this concept. There are a good number of weirdos in the book, which only find in Europe (having travelled through most of the major cities) I do know that this memoir is humorous but it does accentuate that there is a certain continental character that emerges.

Flower factory is an entertaining book and a fun read. Plus if you’ve never known about hyacinth itch, here’s your chance.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. This is a really interesting read about a time (only twenty years ago) that now seems to have passed. It’s the world of mainly young migrants heading to the Netherlands to work in the bulb factories, living in tents and caravans - often to earn enough money to spend the ‘off’ season travelling in more exotic climes. It’s the kind of work/lifestyle that it’s hard to imagine most young Europeans wanting now - although a moot point here as it’s no longer an option for people from the UK anyway..

There’s a lot of culture shock, a lot of beer, drugs and chips and a considerable focus on music (which given the fact that Richard Foster is a music critic is no strange thing). I’d say that it would be appreciated more by those more caught up in the nineties music scene and the beer, drugs and chips did get a bit wearying in the end (hence the 3.5 stars) but still an intriguing look at a different kind of life with plenty of nostalgia for those who were young in the 1999s and 2000s. Most people will have known some version of each of the different characters…. Finally, I’ll never look at a packet of bulbs without more of a sense of appreciation ever again.

[Jonathan Walker]

This is advertised as a novel, but it reads like lightly fictionalised reportage, and I’d say its virtues are those of non-fiction: a vivid glimpse into a world rarely described.

The late economist David Graeber gave us the concept of bullshit jobs, those that exist solely to generate the appearance of doing something of value. But these are to be distinguished from the simpler but more fundamental category of shitty jobs: often vital tasks, usually physically demanding, unpleasant and poorly paid. During Covid, we rightly identified many of these roles as those of key workers. They usually exist outside the purview of literary representation, because they are a) very repetitive, and so do not lend themselves to complex narrative treatment and larger dramatic structure; and b) exhausting, so that it’s difficult for those so employed to carve out time to write about them. There are exceptions to this rule: Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London, Stephanie Land’s Maid, maybe Bukowski’s Post Office. And now Flower Factory.

So: some of this is dedicated to the processes and routines of factory work; more to the culture of work and the avoidance of work – unsurprisingly, there’s more on the canteen breaks and snatched conversations, as that’s where the workers’ energies and imaginations are actually (and rightly) directed. And more again on the amorphous counterculture that the seasonal work in the flower factories supports: one of raves, squats, drugtaking and drinking (less so on the travelling that many workers do in the off-season, for the simple reason that that’s done elsewhere). I say ‘amorphous’ counterculture because there isn’t really a shared set of values and goals beyond hedonism: this is a world of misfits who can’t survive or prosper in the bland corporate cultures of white-collar work, even in its shittier outer circles like call centres. The work here may be backbreaking but no one demands you pretend to enjoy it or identify wholeheartedly with and parrot your employer’s spurious values. And the descriptions are alive to all the possible permutations and minute subcultures to be encountered, either at work, or in bars (e.g. the locals with 'prominent tattoos and smiles like the flat of a knife').

This also offers a kind of worm's eye view of Dutch culture, seen from the outside-in and bottom-up. If it's not exactly a celebration of the possibilities of freedom of movement within Europe, it's still a kind of requiem for what already feels like a lost age. The final pages describe the reaction to 9/11 within the factory: because that's the foundational event of the darker world we currently inhabit.

Also worth noting that this has a superb cover design, which combines different paper stocks to mimic the packaging of the bulb boxes the protagonist assembles. And the interior text is typeset in Quadraat, i.e. a Dutch typeface. The book also includes some evocative line drawings by the author.

[Amy]

Review to come

[Wilbert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Flower Factory is a book of events set in an part of the Netherlands that I know very well, but working environments which are alien to me.

Having frequented several of the bars and venues mentioned, I get a far better understanding about some of the regulars, and their motivations and challenges.

Foster shows an an observant and keen eye, singling out the particulars of people and events, and describing these in rich language, making for very vivid scenes.

Blue and white collar jobs in general come with profoundly different attitudes and values, which Foster portrays with sharp wit and an obvious regard for the multitudes making up the international “working classes”. Not only the traditional working class, but also the “travellers” are described in way that finally gives me a grasp on this special breed of outliers.

The author’s art in the book is superb and a strong match complementing the stories.

Thank you Richard, for this great window into a world largely unfamiliar to me, although I know many of the sorts you describe.

[Menno Pot · Rating 4 out of 5]

Is it autobiographical? Is it a novel? A little bit of both? Flower Factory is funny, well written and fantastically weird. A young Englishman moved to the Dutch ‘Bollenstreek’ (‘Bulb District’) to work in a flower bulb factory. To me, as a Dutchman, his adventures are instantly recognizable and totally strange at the same time: Foster’s thoughts about the area and its inhabitants are spot on. He lives in a strange subculture, though, introducing us to a weird bunch if seasonal workers from all over Europe. We visit their pubs, their squat parties, their underground raves. The story is set in the year 2000, so the story is also a trip to a (pre 9/11) world that no longer exists. Loved it.

[Tom · Rating 2 out of 5]

Gorgeous cover design and intriguing premise mask a somewhat disappointing execution. Foster's lightly-fictionalised account of his time spent as a seasonal worker in the Netherlands, at the turn of the millennium, has all the ingredients of a great, keenly observed bit of cultural anthropology.

Sometimes you follow the recipe to the tee and still fail to get the results you expected. The book is episodic by nature, the itinerant nature of both the work, colleagues and lifestyle dictating the format, but...I'm not sure I'd describe some of the chapters as "episodes," even. They're not so much anecdotes as bits of autobiographical colour you'd throw out as the bridge to other conversational topics, or to draw comparison to similar experiences you've had with others. There's not enough detail to really ground you in either the work or leisure time of this world, nor are the characters Ford hangs out with consistent or well drawn enough to stick in the mind.

A late-in-the-game revelation perhaps explains this: our narrator professes to be on the outside of the wider culture of his fellow workers, career backpackers and ravers and drop-outs who have a familiar cobbled-together spirituality and vague anti-authoritarianism, dreadlocks and prodigious drug intakes. Pressing his face so close to the glass, he doesn't manage to present a particularly clear picture. It's a shame, not least of all because — between innumerable socioeconomic developments since the year 2000 — I imagine this scene no longer exists. And like many investigations into lost civilisations, Flower Factory presents us with only the barest artefacts from which we must theorise an understanding of how it all actually worked at the time.

[Dean Birkett · Rating 4 out of 5]

As someone who arrived in the Netherlands months after the author, it made for familiar reading. Although moving in different social circles, the places and people were not alien to me. There were times, especially in the first couple of chapters, and the last two, where it felt like I was stepping back in time. Bar en Boos, the first sighing of Zwarte Piet, that bar near Woo Ping... Thanks for the memories!

[George Millership · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5. lots of fun.