Biography
Holly Ringland is the author of the internationally bestselling and award-winning novel. The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart. She won the ABIA (Australian Book Industry Award for general fiction).
Throughout 2020, Holly travelled Australia to film Back To Nature, a visually stunning 8-episode series she co-hosted with Aaron Pedersen. Back To Nature aired to critical acclaim on ABC TV in 2021. All episodes are now streaming on ABC iVie.
Holly’s new novel, The Seven Skins of Esther Wilding, was published by HarperCollins Australia in October 2022 and will be published in North America by House of Anansi in February 2024.
Biography
Prior to the pandemic, Holly divided her time between Australia and the UK, where she had Australian native flowers growing in both places.
In 2020 she bought a 1968 Olympic Riviera caravan, named "Frenchie," her Plan B writing office based on Yugambeh land, southeast Queensland, in which she wrote Esther Wilding’s story.
Holly’s new non-fiction book about creativity, The House That Joy Built, will be published in October, 2023. The subtitle reads: "the pleasure and power of giving ourselves permission to create."
NOTE: her source books was The Victorian Language of Flowers.
Biography
The Seven Skins of Esther Wilding, Holly’s second novel, published in October 2022, became an instant national bestseller in Australia and New Zealand.
From Amazon:
“On the afternoon that Esther Wilding drove homeward along the coast, a year after her sister had walked into the sea and disappeared, the light was painfully golden.” The last time Esther Wilding’s beloved older sister Aura was seen, she was walking along the shore towards the sea. In the wake of Aura’s disappearance, Esther’s family struggles to live with their loss. To seek the truth about her sister’s death, Esther reluctantly travels from Lutruwita (Tasmania) to Copenhagen, and then to the Faroe Islands, following the trail of the stories Aura left behind: seven fairy tales about selkies, swans, and women, alongside cryptic verses Aura wrote and had secretly tattooed on her body.
The Seven Skins of Esther Wilding is a sweeping, deeply beautiful, and profoundly moving novel about the far reaches of sisterly love, the power of wearing your heart on your skin, and the ways life can transform when we find the courage to feel the fullness of both grief and joy.
From her Facebook page
She appears in the final episode of the mini series based on The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart; with her partner Sam. Many fans spotted her. She commented:
This is the magic of the power of story. How it lives in each of us and connects us and moves us and means something deep and indescribable to all of us. Which is, I guess, a way of saying another thank you. Thank you for seeing me. In more ways than one. Thank you for bringing the words I write to life in your own heart. And embracing them on screen. Thanks to Director, Glendyn Ivin, for giving me this gift, of stepping into the tangible world of my novel, and sharing that with you.
From tripfiction
Memory is the fourth dimension to any landscape.” — Janet Fitch
I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was three years old, when my mother taught me to read. I grew up a block from the Pacific Ocean, on the Gold Coast, Queensland
My favorite books were ones that reflected the world I lived in, the Australian classics, Snugglepot and Cuddlepie by May Gibbs, and, Marmaduke the Possum, by Pixie O’Harris. Both were tales embedded in the Australian landscape from European storytelling perspectives.
As soon as I learned to write, I starting writing stories, mostly tales about gum tree queens, butterfly elves, and wattle fairies. When Mum added Indigenous Australian books to my library, like Dick Roughsey’s The Rainbow Serpent, and, The Quinkins, my understanding of the relationship between stories and landscapes deepened.
From tripfiction
As I got older and began to choose my own books, I picked young novels and fairytales, most of which were European or American. Likewise, the television and films I watched were primarily American, sometimes English, and least likely Australian. The tendency of my imagination’s preference for story settings began to change.
When I was nine years old my family and I moved to North America. We rented a house in Vancouver, Canada, which we used as our base while we travelled in a camper van from national park to national park. Living in North America was like jumping into one of Mary Poppins’ chalk drawings; it was the place I’d read about in my beloved Judy Blume books, seen on Disney television, and at the movies. North American place and culture created an exotic sense of wonder that my native Australian surroundings couldn’t match in my imagination.
After we returned to Australia a couple of years later, the stories I wrote were always set overseas, even if only implicitly. It didn’t feel like a conscious decision to separate my storytelling from my home, it felt like a default setting in my imagination.
From tripfiction
It wasn’t until I moved inland in my early twenties to live and work in an Aboriginal community in Australia’s western desert, learning and sharing culture and stories with Anangu colleagues, that my imagination started to realign. In my writing I noticed more and more of a sense of Australian people, weather, bodies of water, flowers, and bushland began to creep onto my page.
When I was 29 I left Australia to move to England to give my writing dreams a wholehearted crack. The extreme contrast of my new life in moody, chilly northern England to my bright, hot home gave me a deep, renewed appreciation of the beauty and unique magic of my homeland.
From tripfiction
In 2014 when I sat down and wrote the first line of The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart, it was immediately clear the story was set in Australia. I wrote the entire first draft in Manchester.
My office became a trove of Australian native flora, scents, photos, and objects. I was driven to embody Alice’s world as much as possible, hungry for the sea I grew up beside, for the feeling of salty skin; for the mystifying green sugar cane fields at the end of my grandmother’s street; for the peach and silver-blue sunsets I’ve watched from my mum’s verandah; for the wildflowers and red dirt of my old desert home.
Remembering the places I’ve lived in, loved and left behind caused a hunger that went through me, like first love. It was blissful, unstoppable agony to write them to life on the page.
From tripfiction
Spanning two decades, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart is set between sugar cane fields by the sea, a native Australian flower farm, and a celestial crater in the desert. All the settings in the novel are informed by places and people I’ve known and loved. My experience of growing up on the southeast Queensland coast informed my portrayal of Alice’s childhood seaside world as much as my experience of living in central Australia informed my portrayal of Alice’s life in the desert.
I don’t feel I could have written any of this particular book without first hand sensory knowledge and connection of the landscapes and people I’ve fictionalised. To me, fiction is emotional truth; this novel is wholly drawn from some level of understanding or experience I’ve had in my life of the diverse and dramatic Australian landscapes, and the people in them.
Vanilla lily—from Australian National Botanic Gardens
Arthropodium milleflorum is a tuberous perennial herb belonging to the Asparagaceae family. It is commonly known as the Vanilla Lily, due to the slight scent emitted from the flowers.
The species has a wide distribution along the east coast, from Queensland to South Australia and Tasmania. It is particularly prevalent on the Southern Tablelands and in eastern NSW. It favours moist, grassy, sheltered slopes in open eucalypt forest, but can also be found in woodland, montane forest, and other grassland.
It is listed as endangered in South Australia due to illegal collection for the horticulture trade, but is not considered at risk elsewhere.
Vanilla lily—from Australian National Botanic Gardens
The flowers appear between November and February on spreading or branching stems, are hermaphroditic and consist of six white-lilac petals, purple anthers and distinctive white or cream hairy filaments. Fruits develop between December and March. At the base of the plant are dark green, strappy leaves, which grow to about 60 cm long.
The plant has traditionally been used as a food source by some Aboriginal groups. The tubers are eaten raw or roasted. The flowers are also edible. The presence of flowers may have signaled to hunters that game animals, such as bandicoots (which eat the tubers of this species), were nearby.
The plant is low maintenance, frost tolerant and has relatively low water requirements. Some sources suggest it can go dormant in the drier months, which may make it more resilient to drought. A key feature of the plant is its flowers, which are pleasantly scented, insect attracting, and hang in dainty panicles along the arching stems. It is ideal planted en masse in a meadow, path border, rockery, or under trees, and can also grow in a pot.
In nature the plant is usually propagated by birds or small mammals eating the fruit and spreading the seed. It can self-seed to some extent, but does not become invasive.
Selkies—from Wilderness Ireland
The legend of a selkie is one that we in Ireland share with our neighbours in Scotland, but there are dozens of varieties and hundreds of stories. In short, the legend of the selkie is Ireland’s concept of a mermaid.
. . . a selkie is a marine legend that tells of people who are half fish, and half-human. In the water, they are seals, but on land, they shed their skin and take on human form. And for some reason, they are irresistible to ordinary humans, who are apt to fall in love with the seal people.
Selkies are often sighted by those living in remote coastal areas. Legend has it that in order to come ashore, selkies must first shed their skin or tail. And if you manage to find that skin and hide it away, the seal person cannot return to the sea. Irish folklore is littered with tales of men and women (usually men) finding a selkie skin and hiding it, then marrying the selkie woman.
Selkies—from Intrepidus Outdoors (Scotland)
The selkie is a mythological being found in the folklore of Scotland. They are shapeshifters, transforming between seal and human form by shedding and replacing their skin. In their human form, selkie folk are always incredibly attractive, graceful, kind natured and amorous. As a result, humans who come across them fall desperately in love.
Tales of Selkies are found predominantly in the Outer Hebrides, Orkney and Shetland, though they are not restricted to Scotland. They also appear in the folklore of Ireland, Iceland, the Faroe Islands. Seal tales are also present in the folklore of the Inuit as well as the Chinook people of the west coast of America, where the Columbia river meets the sea.
The communities from which the tales originate depend on the sea for their livelihood. Living in close proximity to the sea, such communities are well aware of its ability to be a wild, tempestuous and unpredictable. The selkie is a symbol of its calm and bountiful temperament and often save the lives of child or fisherman who have fallen into the sea.
Selkies—from Intrepidus Outdoors (Scotland)
Selkies love to come ashore, shed their skin and bask in the sunlight, or sing.
The sea king and queen once lived happily with their many beautiful children. The children spent the day frolicking among the coral gardens and lush meadows on the sea bed.
One fateful day the sea queen fell ill. Nothing her king or the other sea folk could do would save her and, only weeks later, she died. The sea king and his children were bereft. The children missed their mother’s comforting arms and her gentle voice singing them to sleep at night. No longer could singing or laughter be heard in the coral caves and gardens.
Despite his sorrow, the king felt it his duty to remarry and provide the children with a new mother. The sea witch, an ugly individual due to many years of bitter jealousy, fancied the opportunity to become queen and rule over all those who had cause her strife. She took advantage of the situation and convinced the sea king to marry her. However her jealousy over others continued and she also targeted her ill feelings at the sea children, who despite their sorrow were still more beautiful than the queen could ever be, for they were graceful and kind of heart.
Selkies—from Intrepidus Outdoors (Scotland)
The king, in his fury, banished the sea witch to a cave in the darkest depths of the ocean but no one could reverse the magic. And so the seals swim, can often be found frolicking and singing near the coast, among the shallows.
The sea witch cast a spell on the king's children, turning them into seals, cursing them to never again be able to live in the kingdom, but to swim as seals forever more in the ocean, apart from the one day a year that they could shed their skin and take their true form on land.
Selkies legend—from Intrepidus Outdoors (Scotland)
Many years later, a tired young fisherman was heading home along the coastal path to his two young children. Recently widowed, he struggled to bring up his children alone. He went to sea to earn money for his family and had no choice but to leave the children at home alone. While rounding the headland he happened upon a seal skin, discarded on the rocks. The fisherman felt the fine, silky pelt of the skin and thought what a fine price it would fetch, enough to allow him to employ an old maid to look after his children. He took the pelt home and locked it safely in his wooden chest, hiding the key in the eaves, until he could take it to market.
That night, the wind howled and waves crashed upon the shore in an storm. The fisherman was huddled with his two children beside the fire telling a story to settle them when they heard a faint knock at the door. On opening the door, the fisherman saw the most beautiful creature he had ever laid eyes on. She had an old hessian sack wrapped around her and her hair was wild and knotted with seaweed. She collapsed, sobbing, through the door. The young fisherman wrapped the selkie girl in blankets and laid her down near the fire, thinking she must have come from a wreck at sea.
Selkies—from Intrepidus Outdoors (Scotland)
On waking the next morning, the fisherman and his two children found the selkie girl sitting by the fire, cooking porridge. She was incredibly grateful to the fisherman for inviting her into his home but could not tell him where she had come from, just that she had nowhere to go. The fisherman, enchanted by the young woman, insisted she stay until she was quite herself again. And so she stayed, for without her sealskin, the selkie could not return to the sea.
And so the days and weeks passed, the young woman kept house, cooked the meals and cared for the fisherman’s children. In the evenings the fisherman would tell stories and the young woman would sing to the children. The selkie grew fond of the fisherman’s children; they reminded her of her own brothers and sisters. Laughter returned to her life once more.
The fisherman fell deeper in love with the young woman every day until one day he asked her to marry him. Although she longed for the sea, the selkie had no way of returning without her skin (which the fisherman had completely forgotten about, locked safe in his chest) and she had found some happiness with the fisherman and his family, so she agreed. They were married and had children of their own and lived together in the little cottage for several years.
Selkies—from Intrepidus Outdoors (Scotland)
One winter’s morning, when the wind and the waves had been building all night and a storm was coming, the fisherman readied himself for a day on the boat. The selkie couldn’t believe her husband was heading out but he would not listen to her pleas, insisting he knew how to read the weather and that there was no danger, the storm was passing further south.
He set off and the winds did grow stronger, the waves more voracious. As the little cottage was battered by the storm, a sudden icy blast shook the roof and a small rusty key dropped from the eaves, where it had been hidden years earlier. This blast also chilled the bones of the selkie, convincing her something terrible had befallen her husband. She was faced with images of her husband thrown from his boat, torn apart by the storm, into the mercy of the storm fuelled sea.
The children meanwhile were delighted with the gift that had fallen from the eaves and examined the key carefully, imagining doorways to magical worlds and chests full of treasure. At this thought, the eldest girl grabbed the key and dashed across the room to the old chest. She placed the key in the lock, the lock clicked. Her brothers and sister joined her to slowly lift the lid.
Selkies—from Intrepidus Outdoors (Scotland)
Whether it was the noise of the key turning in the lock, the creak of the lid opening or the familiar smell of her skin, the selkie girl snapped out of her trance, turning to see her children pulling her long lost skin out of the chest. She knew in that instant the fate that had befallen her husband and dashed across the room, taking her old familiar skin in her hands. With nothing more than a quick kiss on each child’s head, the selkie was out the door and running to the shore. She threw off her clothes and put on the skin, diving into the water she had once called home. She swam out in the storm and found her husband, clinging to a broken barrel among the waves. She returned him to the shore near the cottage, where, the next morning, he was found, unconscious but alive.
The selkie however could never return to land, for the constraints of the witches spell had been broken, she had remained on land longer than the day she was allowed, and she would remain a seal forever more.
The Novel
Cast of characters
Alice Hart
Mother is Agnes Ivie, brought to Thornfield by the Salvation Army to work; she was an orphan, like Candy, and the same age.
Alice was born in the backseat of her father's truck on a stormy night, filled with rain, wind, and lightning, . . . "and the scent of storm lilies in bloom. You were the true love I needed to wake me from a curse, Bun, her mother would say to finish the story. You’re my fairytale."
Father is Clem (clematis) Hart, who left Thornfield in a rage when he found out that his mother June did not leave the property to him. He's an angry abusive man.
June
Alice's grandmother, and mother of Clem; she dies suddenly, heart attack, after Alice leaves when she finds out June had Boryana and Oggie deported.
Cast of characters
Sally Morgan—librarian Alice meets when she visits the library after running away from home
Jillian is the daughter she had with Clem, from a brief affair when she was 18. She leads John to believe the daughter is his. Jillian dies from leukemia at age 5.
Agnes appointed Sally as guardian of the children, should June not be capable; she also tells Sally of her plans to leave Clem and return to Thornfield, using underlined words in books about Selkies
Sally and husband John adopt Charlie, Alice's brother, who was born prematurely after the fire and survived.
Brooke—nurse when Alice is in hospital
Cast of characters
"The Flowers"—12 women who work and reside at Thornfield
Candy, or Candy Baby—was infatuated with Clem until he met Agnes
She has blue hair and bakes Anzac biscuits; she cooks, June says, "to feed the soul."
"where, and to whom, [she had been born] no one knew. The date she celebrated as her birthday was the night June and Twig found her abandoned, swaddled in a blue ball gown, floating in a bassinet on a waterlogged heath of vanilla lilies between the river and the flower field."
Early days when Alice comes to Thornfield, she leaves a cupcake and letter for Alice. In the letter, Candy says: "My favourite story goes like this:
once, on an island not far from here, there was a queen who climbed a tree waiting for her husband to return from a battle. She tied herself to a branch and vowed to remain there until he returned. She waited for so long that she slowly transformed into an orchid, which was an exact replica of the pattern on the blue gown she was wearing."
Cast of characters
"The Flowers"—12 women who work and reside at Thornfield
Twig—has been at Thornfield longest, arrived one night, 30 years ago, "when welfare officers . . . .came into her home with a court order accusing her of child neglect. Because she didn’t have a husband. Because she often left Nina and Johnny with Eunice, her sister, while she went out looking for work. Because she was poor. Because the Child Welfare Department decided the only chance her children had of being proper Australians was if they grew up with a proper Australian family. A white Australian family. One of them had held Twig down while the other wrenched Nina and Johnny from her arms.
Boryana—was once a "Flower" at Thornfield, now lives separate with son Oggi; she grows roses. They're from Bulgaria.
Oggi (Ognian)—friends with Alice from her first day at school. Later, lovers who plan to run away, live in Bulgaria, thwarted by June. A good guy. Fifteen years later, he writes to Alice, explaining what happened. Has a wife and daughter. He had written for years after he left, but June kept the letters from Alice.
Cast of characters
Ruth Stone—Alice's great, great grandmother. Ruth’s name is carved into the trunk of the giant gum tree, by the riverside, and Jacob Wyld’s name is carved beside it.
"The only thing unanimously agreed upon was that Ruth Stone had been traded by Madame Beaumont, owner of a roadhouse brothel in the next town, in exchange for the last dairy cows from Thornfield, a crumbling farm on the outskirts of town," owned by Wade Thornton, an abusive drinker.
Ruth would slip out, run to the drought-stricken river, where she would hide, and sing. One night, an out-of-work drover found her; Jacob Wyld planted seeds at her feet from whicch sprang wild vanilla lilies. She also watered a wattle tree by the house which "exploded into flower."
"In the grip of an extreme drought, farms were dying, farming families were going bankrupt and nothing would grow from the earth; when the town looked set to be scorched off the map forever, Ruth Stone started a native flower farm.
Cast of characters
Ruth Stone
One night, Wade Thornton followed Ruth to the river. "With a roar Wade Thornton lunged from the bushes and knocked Jacob Wyld unconscious with a river stone. He gagged and tied Ruth to a tree and made her watch as he drowned her lover with his bare hands."
Later, Ruth gave birth to her daughter, and Jacob's—Wattle Thornton. And let her garden wither.
Cast of characters
Wattle Stone Thornton Hart—most of the townspeople ignored her, except Lucas Hart, a boy walking alone along the river. He thought she was some kind of mermaid. Although he knew the stories common in town, Lucas always wanted to say, Ruth Stone never was Wade Thornton’s consenting wife, nor, as the story went, was Wade Wattle Stone’s father.
One night, "he heard a woman scream, followed by a single gunshot. Then silence. Lucas ran down the path from the river into Thornfield’s dusty yard, where Wattle Stone was holding a rifle, crumpled over Wade Thornton’s body, soaked in blood so dark it could have been ink."
There was slander, but Dr. Lucas Hart "went public with his testimony: he witnessed Wade Thornton stumbling around in a drunken stupor, firing off his hunting rifle as he tried to clean it, and ultimately shot himself dead."
He finished medical school, married Wattle and they had a daughter June. Over a dozen seasons, Wattle cajoled her mother’s flower farm back to life.
Cast of characters
Wattle Hart--Although Wattle revived her mother’s beloved garden, she couldn’t settle the madness in Ruth’s mind. Wattle doted on her mother the way she did on her own child, trying to make her happy, but Ruth still crept out of the house every night. Wattle lay awake listening to the floorboards creak, until one moonlit evening, with June snug against her chest, she decided to follow her mother to the river. She watched as Ruth laid flowers in the water, talking the whole time." When Wattle asked who she was talking to, "Your father, my love, Ruth replied simply. The River King."
Ruth died in her sleep when June was just 3 years old. "Her will left everything to Wattle. Ruth asked only one thing of her daughter: to ensure Thornfield was never bequeathed to an undeserving man."
Cast of characters
June was eighteen years old when she stood beside her mother to scatter her father’s ashes around the wattle tree. Afterwards, . . . .June fled to the river. She hadn’t run the chalky path much, not since she was a child when she began to learn stories about the bad fortune doing so brought to the women in her family. June craved an order to things and it frightened her that love could be so wild and unfair; she hated the sight of the gum tree her mother and grandmother had carved their names into, bearing the blessing and curse love had dealt each of them.
That day, however, her body parched by grief, June was drawn through the bush by the thought of the water. When she reached the river, . . . she found a young man swimming naked in the tea-green water, staring up at the sky.
June fell into love like it was the river: steady, constant and true. She told herself this was nothing like her grandmother Ruth’s ill-fated love affair with the River King, nor the safety of her mother and father’s union. The way June saw it, she was in control; she would not lose her heart to a man and have to engrave her name in a tree to bear witness to her pain. Her love wouldn’t be an unfinished story. He would be back. When the wattle bloomed.
Cast of characters
June
While June wasn’t paying any attention, disease had eaten what was left of her mother’s heart. For the funeral, June cut down all the flowering wattle at Thornfield.
By the time spring came, June knew she was pregnant. She gave birth alone on a windblown autumn day and named her son Clematis, a bright and ever-climbing star. When the wattle was next in bloom, June knew before she reached the clearing by the river with the swaddled baby in her arms that he would not be there. Nor would he ever come again.
Questions for discussion
How are these women's stories significant in the novel?
Note, because these are Australian wild flowers, many are associated with stories from native cultures or mythologies. Storytelling is important in this novel. Why?
Questions for discussion
Where/how did these women get involved with the men who fathered their children?
Cast of characters
Kililpitjara crater park employees:
Sarah, visitor services manager at the park, who discovers Alice in Agnes Bluff and recruits her.
Lulu, friend, partner is Aiden, she has pre-vision or foresight, recognizes that Alice will make a difference at the park when she sees the monarch butterfly decals on the sides of Alice's truck—hiding her identity. Her grandmother called monarch butterflies "fire warriors." Lulu had had a relationship with Dylan, knows his character. She also says the circle of Sturt desert peas inside the crater mean "heart garden."
In Anangu culture, the crater was caused by a great crash that also came from the sky, but not an iron meteorite; it is where a grieving mother’s heart fell to Earth. Long ago, Ngunytju lived in the stars. One night, when she wasn’t looking, her baby fell from its cradle in the sky to Earth. When she realised what happened, Ngunytju was inconsolable. She took her heart from her celestial body and flung it to Earth, to be in and of the land with her fallen child.
Cast of characters
Kililpitjara crater park employees:
Ruby—a senior ranger, member of First Nations people, taken from her mother as a child, writes poems. "It was a visible kind of invisibility; all Ruby could ever see were those not there with her." She writes poetry, most of which "come[s] down from the stars."
Aiden--Lulu's partner, teaches Alice how to do the "burn," a nice guy
Dylan Rivers—handsome, irresistible to women, but dangerous, never "tells his story," his anger and physical abuse parallel Clem's.
Cast of characters
Moss Fletcher—veterinarian Alice meets in Agnes Bluff when she rescues Pip. He lost his wife Clara and son Patrick in a car accident; plans to tell Alice, but doesn't. He googles her to find her Thornfield roots, calls, talks to Twig, discovers June is dead but can't tell Alice. Alice calls him when Dylan kicks Pip, he sends medicine, calls Thornfield and tells them where Alice is. He too is a good guy. His name means "love without exception."
Dogs
Toby when she's a child
Harry at Thornfield,
Pip at the crater
Questions for discussion
Chapter 1, line 1
"In the weatherboard house at the end of the lane, nine-year-old Alice Hart sat at her desk by the window and dreamed of ways to set her father on fire."
By the way, the flower for that chapter is the Black Fire Orchid, which means "desire to possess," and the note below says it "needs fire to flower."
The paragraph below that first one reads:
"In front of her, on the eucalyptus desk her father built, a library book lay open. It was filled with stories collected from around the world about the myths of fire. Although a northeasterly blew in from the Pacific, full of brine, Alice could smell smoke, earth and burning feathers. She read, whispering aloud:
The phoenix bird is immersed into fire, to be consumed by the flames, to burn to ashes and rise renewed, remade, reformed – the same, but altogether different.
If fire is a theme in this novel, what does it mean? Where else does it appear?
Questions for discussion
The Dedication to the novel
For women who doubt the worth and power of their story.
For my mother, who gave everything to bring me flowers.
And this book is for Sam, without whom my lifelong dream would remain unwritten.
After the Table of Contents, the book includes the following stanza from Tennyson's "Maud":
There has fallen a splendid tear
From the passion-flower at the gate.
She is coming, my dove, my dear;
She is coming, my life, my fate;
The red rose cries, ‘She is near, she is near;’
And the white rose weeps, ‘She is late;’
The larkspur listens, ‘I hear, I hear;’
And the lily whispers, ‘I wait.’
Questions for discussion
And later, just before the end, as a section break, she includes an excerpt from a poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning:
Beloved, thou hast brought me many flowers …
… take them, as I used to do
Thy flowers, and keep them where they shall not pine.
Instruct thine eyes to keep their colours true,
And tell thy soul, their roots are left in mine.
Sonnets from the Portugese, #44
Beloved, thou hast brought me many flowers
Plucked in the garden, all the summer through
And winter, and it seemed as if they grew
In this close room, nor missed the sun and showers,
So, in the like name of that love of ours,
Take back these thoughts which here unfolded too,
And which on warm and cold days I withdrew
From my heart’s ground. Indeed, those beds and bowers
Be overgrown with bitter weeds and rue,
And wait thy weeding; yet here’s eglantine,
Here’s ivy!— take them, as I used to do
Thy flowers, and keep them where they shall not pine.
Instruct thine eyes to keep their colours true,
And tell thy soul, their roots are left in mine.
Sonnets from the Portuguese
Sonnets from the Portuguese is comprised of forty-four sonnets. Robert Browning used to call his wife “the Portuguese,” which is why she chose this title. She spent much of her life ill and frail, and she never expected to find love. The sonnet collection reflects her shift from depression to joy and hopefulness.
From the Poetry Foundation
" a one-sentence distillation of British Romanticism—its conviction of the sympathetic connections between nature’s organic growth and human creativity, and its passion for individual imagination as an originating force."
Questions for discussion
From Poetry Foundation, on British Romanticism:
its conviction of the sympathetic connections between nature’s organic growth and human creativity, and its passion for individual imagination as an originating force.
Questions for discussion
What do you think of the character June? She's hidden a lot of Alice's story from her, and hidden a lot of her own past, and the family's past. And she's "disinherited" her son Clem.
Why?
Questions for discussion
The telling, or not telling, of stories, particularly family or personal history, is an issue throughout this novel.
June doesn't tell Alice about her parents and why they left, about her brother Charlies, about her mother and grandmother, about what's she done to remove Boryana and Oggie, etc.
Neither Candy nor Twig tell Alice about her past, although they know at least some of the story, especially Twig. But she says: "its was her [June's] story to tell."
But Alice doesn't tell her friends at the crater park about her personal history; she makes up stories based on her reading, and she hides her identity with paint and decals over the logo on her truck, although Moss sees it.
Lulu doesn't talk about her history with Dylan; she says even Aiden doesn't know all of it. And Dylan tells nothing about his history.
Yet these stories are important.
What's going on here?
Questions for discussion
Why does June keep so many secrets. She has Oggi and his mother deported, writes a fake email as Alice, breaking up with him, hides his letters to Alice despite the break up. And she's lied to Alice about Charlie, or hidden the fact of his existence. Why?
Questions for discussion
June stood at the kitchen counter with the open whisky bottle and poured herself another glass. She was tired. Tired of bearing the weight of a past that was too painful to remember.
She was tired of flowers that spoke the things people couldn’t bear to say. Of heartbreak, isolation and ghosts. Of being misunderstood. When it came to telling Alice about her family, June struggled with the thought of bearing any more blame for the secrets that grew among Thornfield’s flowers.
There had to be another way for the child to heal than to be accosted with the truth about her family, which, despite the morning when Alice seemingly recognised her face, June was fairly sure she didn’t know. Nothing indicated that Alice knew why her father took her mother away from Thornfield, or that June could have changed her mind, surrendered to Clem, and maybe saved Agnes.
But she’d let her son go, and he’d taken Alice’s mother with him. Because June would not yield to his rage. Because Agnes loved him more than she knew how to love herself.
She [Ruth] couldn’t bear Alice thinking badly of her. Day after day, the stories remained unspoken. (p. 137)
Questions for discussion
When Alice sneaks into Clem's shed, she finds numerous wooden statues—all female figures, Ruth predominantly, Alice herself, and another girl very like her—Gillian?
Alice would always remember this day as the one that changed her life irrevocably, even though it would take her the next twenty years to understand: life is lived forward but only understood backward. You can’t see the landscape you’re in while you’re in it.
Questions for discussion
Several times throughout the novel, Alice repeats the line "I'm—here."
P. 10--Version after version of this woman and girl filled the shed, closing in around the bench. Alice took slow and deep breaths, listening to her heartbeat. I’m–here, it said. I’m–here. If fire could be a spell that turned one thing into another, so too could words. Alice had read enough to understand the charms that words could possess, especially when repeated. Say something enough times and it would be so. She focused on the spell beating in her heart. I’m–here.
P. 39—this time it's Sally with Alice in the hospital room, after the fire:
Alice, can you hear me? I’m here. The voice. Softly. She [Alice] drifted in and out of consciousness
P. 41—Sally: Alice, can you hear me? I’m here. She [Alice] was outside of herself, watching the fire snakes consume her body.
P. 46—Alice, regaining consciousness, trying to breathe:
I’m–here. I’m–here. I’m–here.
Questions for discussion
Several times throughout the novel, Alice repeats the line "I'm—here."
P. 180—Alice is waiting for Oggi; they'd planned to run away, go to Bulgaria, but he doesn't show:
She arranged herself neatly on the smooth grey rock at the base of the gum and listened for Oggi’s footsteps. Lifted her locket from under the neckline of her shirt. ‘I’m here,’ she whispered, looking at her mother’s face. She wrapped her scarf around her body, and propped herself up against the trunk of the gum tree. Alice leaned her head back, watching for falling stars. She waited.
P. 213—Alice has fled to the desert, living in Agnes Bluff, pub room:
Alice looked beyond the buildings and streets to the undulating red sand dunes and gullies of spinifex and desert oaks, stretching as far as she could see. She remembered soldier crabs, sea breezes, green sugar cane, silver river water, and fields of bright, blooming flowers. . . . She was further than she’d ever been from anyone, anything and anywhere she knew. ‘I’m here,’ she whispered.
Questions for discussion
Several times throughout the novel, Alice repeats the line "I'm—here."
P. 236 Alice moves into the house provided at the crater national park:
Alice pressed her back against the door and closed her eyes. The house filled with a silence that made her temples pound. I’m here. She breathed in. And out. I’m here.
P. 311 Aiden is teaching volunteers how to do a controlled burn at the park:
The hiss and crackle of the earth catching fire rose around them. She tried to focus on her boot-clad feet as she walked at a slow pace through the red dirt and bushes, lowering her drip torch and dropping flames behind her. One, two, drop. One, two, drop. I’m, here, drop. I’m, here, drop.
The memory played out in front of her: the blurred ground beneath her as she and Toby ran from her father’s shed. The hot wind on her face. The lightning cracking the sky into pieces. Her beautiful mother, coming beaten from the sea.
Questions for discussion
Several times throughout the novel, Alice repeats the line "I'm—here."
Finally, p. 373—last lines in the novel
When she was ready, Alice uncapped her pen and scrawled the title of her manuscript across the cover of every notebook, amid her flower illustrations. She piled them in her lap and bound them with string. Gathered them together with the folder of emails and put the bundle on the bonfire. As she reached for the fire flowers and then, the matches in her pocket, Alice faltered. Took a moment to collect herself. Breathe. She slid a match from its box, steadied her hand, and struck it against the flint. A quick intake of oxygen, the smell of sulphur, and a quiet hiss and crackle; the bonfire came to life. The blaze rose against the backdrop of the ocean. Alice watched the flowers catch alight and burn; the corners of Dylan’s emails blacken and char; all her notebooks turn incandescent. She watched the words she’d written on the covers until they were no longer legible--The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart
Questions for discussion
Several times throughout the novel, Alice repeats the line "I'm—here."
After a while she went to the garden chair and sat, cradling the Thornfield Dictionary in her arms. Pip lolled against her legs. Alice took a deep breath full of salt, smoke and flowers, gazing at the flames. Their changing colours. Their transformations. Her beautiful mother, forever in her garden. Alice pressed a hand over her desert pea locket and ininti seed necklace. Trust your story. All you can do is tell it true. The memory came clear and unfettered: in the weatherboard house at the end of the lane, she sat at her desk by the window, dreaming of ways to set her father on fire. Her heart beat slow.
I’m–here.
I’m–here.
I’m–here.
Breakout Room Question
What does this phrase mean? Why does Alice repeat it so frequently throughout the novel?
Those are also the last lines in the novel. So what does the ending mean?
Questions for discussion
Why does the title refer to the "lost" flowers of Alice Hart? What flowers are "lost"?
Video interviews
New York Botanic Garden
State Library of Queensland
Gardening Australia