Hardly in the category of subtle, understated covers (click to enlarge the picture), Margot Berwin's book Hot House Flower, which has just arrived, nevertheless intrigues me as it's a novel about plants!
Lila is thirty-two, divorced, disillusioned and lacking direction. When she stops at the flower market to buy a Bird-of-Paradise to brighten up her Manhattan apartment, it's the start of an adventure which will take her to places - real and metaphorical - of which she'd only dreamed.
So, a book involving shamans, herbalists and orchid obsessives, but also "a man who just might be able to dent Lila's emotional armour", I shall be very interested to see what the author makes of her raw material!
Very different in subject matter and style, but two novels about plants and plant hunters which I enjoyed enormously are Philippa Gregory's Earthly Joys and its sequel Virgin Earth. It's a while since I read them but the story of the Tradescants (father and son), their collecting expeditions, life in seventeenth century England and the origins of Oxford's Ashmolean Museum are fascinating, and I recommend them.
You have me quite intrigued by this book and the other two as well. As the summer heats up- I may head to a chaise and read my days away in the garden.
Posted by: blackbird | 12 June 2009 at 01:46 AM
I'm very curious about your take on the flowery covered one (checking . . .), Hot House Flower. I've found that "books like that" have to be tightly written by clever, strong writers in order to overcome their potential for schmaltz and triteness. While I do read what I call fluff or "lite lit," it has to be well-written: Marian Keyes, Jennifer Weiner, Jennifer Crusie, for example. There are so many similar books that simply don't make the cut for me--thank goodness for the library vs. only the bookstore!
I wonder if this one will make your cut! Please let us know!
Posted by: Becky | 12 June 2009 at 08:05 PM