The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart in Aussie Readers

Aug 27, 2018 Kate Forsyth rated it it was amazing

Shelves: contemporary, australian, aww2018

An astonishingly assured debut, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart is a story of love, loss, betrayal and the redemptive power of storytelling. It is both heart-breaking and life-affirming.

A coming-of-age story with a vividly evocative Australian setting, this novel follows the story of Alice Hart who must learn to escape the shadows of an abusive father in order to build a life for herself.

At the age of nine, Alice suffers the tragic loss of her mother and baby brother. She is taken from her seas An astonishingly assured debut, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart is a story of love, loss, betrayal and the redemptive power of storytelling. It is both heart-breaking and life-affirming.

A coming-of-age story with a vividly evocative Australian setting, this novel follows the story of Alice Hart who must learn to escape the shadows of an abusive father in order to build a life for herself.

At the age of nine, Alice suffers the tragic loss of her mother and baby brother. She is taken from her seaside home to live with her grandmother, June, who grows bush flowers and takes in battered and abused women so they can heal in peace. June has developed a secret language of Australian native flowers, to help say the things that are too hard to speak aloud.

Mute and damaged, Alice slowly begins to recover from the wounds of her past, but there are too many secrets, too many shadows. Hurt and betrayed, Alice flees the flower farm and heads into the hot red heart of the Australian desert. She begins to rebuild her life once again, and falls recklessly and dangerously in love.

Sensitive, sympathetic, and vulnerable, Alice is like so many young women, struggling to make sense of their life, wanting to love and be loved but hurt by the danger of feeling so deeply, and needing to find their own voice so they can finally speak up and tell their story. Her journey is one that feels so familiar, and yet is uniquely and powerfully her own.

The Australian landscape, and its strange and beautiful flora, also has a potent presence in the novel. I absolutely loved the use of the secret language of flowers, and how it helped those inarticulate with pain and grief find a way to speak out, tell their story and so find release and healing. The sparkling waters and deep dragging undertow of the seashore, the dull green-grey of the bush with its hidden beauties only visible to those who take the time to see, and the extraordinary fierce grandeur of the red heart of Australia were evoked with such clarity and intimacy, I could feel the heat on my skin, taste the dust on my tongue, smell the tang of eucalyptus and salt in the air.

The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart is beautiful, powerful, intense, and tender, a book to shake your heart and bring a lump to your throat. ...more

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Dec 28, 2019 Kim rated it really liked it

Shelves: australian-fiction, aus-women-writer, fiction, australian-author, cultural-australia, australian, owned, australian-women-writers, own

This is such an enchanting story. Adversity faced by Alice and her family is soothed by love and the language of flowers.
Alice is a completely endearing child so it is frustrating, that as a young adult, she is caught up in suffering from the old delusions from her past of what love is.
She becomes caught in a cycle of past generations but it is also revelations of her past that eventually breaks the cycle.
I wonder if any adults suffering from abuse would find recognisable patterns of behaviour ...more

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Jun 26, 2018 Dee-Ann rated it really liked it

Shelves: australian-authors, indigenous-issues, movie-material, domestic-violence

Enjoyed this book, despite the harrowing scenes of domestic violence. Learnt about flowers and the land and was gripped by the story most of the way. Tried to make fish tacos ... more research is required on my part. I enjoyed the scenery of the book and think it could make an interesting mini series. I finished the book with still a few gaps where I am not sure what happened, which is the main reason it lost one star.

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May 19, 2020 Karen rated it really liked it · review of another edition

A beautifully written book, some of the descriptions of the landscape were so evocative. This is a book about stories and secrets. When Alice Hart is 9 years old she suffers a terrible tragedy with both her parents and her unborn sibling dying in a fire. She goes to live with the grandmother she did not know about on a native flower farm. There are so many family secrets and her grandmother seems to be unwilling to share them with her. After she is betrayed by the man she loves she escapes to ce ...more

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