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The Florist's Daughter
During the long farewell of her mother's dying, Patricia Hampl revisits her Midwestern girlhood. Daughter of a debonair Czech father, whose floral work gave him entrŽe into St. Paul society, and a distrustful Irishwoman with an uncanny ability to tell a tale, Hampl remained, primarily and passionately, a daughter well into adulthood. She traces the arc of faithfulness and struggle that comes with that role from the postwar years past the turbulent sixties. The Florist's 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. Widely recognized as one of our most masterful memoirists, Patricia Hampl has written her most intimate, yet most universal, work to date.
227 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2007
67 people are currently reading
916 people want to read
About the author
Patricia Hampl
45 books121 followersPatricia Hampl is an American memoirist, writer, lecturer, and educator. She teaches in the MFA program at the University of Minnesota at Minneapolis and is one of the founding members of the Loft Literary Center.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 253 reviews
May 10, 2012
I first bought this book two or more years ago. From good publicity in literary places, I thought this would be one I SHOULD read. My interest in the book waned by page 26 and I put it aside. This morning for some reason I found it again. My circumstances have changed completely from my first reading. I have NEVER had the realization how much my own situation brought to how I felt about a book until just now.
My 93-year-old mother is frail. A few months ago I figured she would go any time...having outlived three husbands, and the most recent was her original first love--the most profound loss of all. Also, I recently sat with a very good friend only days before she died, and she knew it was coming. Lastly, my ex-husband of 29 years, is in advanced stages of debilitating MS. In short (that took much too long) I am surrounded with death. I've felt the responsibility of giving each person one last good laugh, listening to whatever they want to discuss, giving up any plans for myself as I know there is precious little time.
This memoir stuck with me, as you can probably understand. It is NOT of the story type at all. It is a reflective essay, a coming full circle (and quite suddenly in some cases) of knowledge that is confirmed as right AND some shocking false beliefs...and how she feels when she learns it.
It is slow, introspective, beautifully (stunning really) written and with much white space...the reader has to interpret. I believe that if a reader is too young or has not had these close encounters with death that the thoughts will be lost. I can see why some of the reviews were calling it a snooze. It is a lot to think about, muse, and contemplate. At this point in my life with so much "ending" encircling me, it gave me peace. And I felt comraderie with the author. Someone who has already been through what is my current world. It helped.
My 93-year-old mother is frail. A few months ago I figured she would go any time...having outlived three husbands, and the most recent was her original first love--the most profound loss of all. Also, I recently sat with a very good friend only days before she died, and she knew it was coming. Lastly, my ex-husband of 29 years, is in advanced stages of debilitating MS. In short (that took much too long) I am surrounded with death. I've felt the responsibility of giving each person one last good laugh, listening to whatever they want to discuss, giving up any plans for myself as I know there is precious little time.
This memoir stuck with me, as you can probably understand. It is NOT of the story type at all. It is a reflective essay, a coming full circle (and quite suddenly in some cases) of knowledge that is confirmed as right AND some shocking false beliefs...and how she feels when she learns it.
It is slow, introspective, beautifully (stunning really) written and with much white space...the reader has to interpret. I believe that if a reader is too young or has not had these close encounters with death that the thoughts will be lost. I can see why some of the reviews were calling it a snooze. It is a lot to think about, muse, and contemplate. At this point in my life with so much "ending" encircling me, it gave me peace. And I felt comraderie with the author. Someone who has already been through what is my current world. It helped.
April 5, 2011
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 should have told Patricia Hampl before she wrote The Florist’s Daughter.
The book cover, as well as Hampl’s prose, is certainly pretty. Unfortunately the old adage about looks being skin deep applies here. The contents behind the cover are pretty words, pretty prose, little substance and a lack of direction. A few not-so-pretty words that come to mind are monotonous, unexciting, repetitive and tedious.
The story begins and ends in the hospital room of Hampl’s dying mother, which in itself is an effective bookend for the narration. These scenes in the hospital room are relatively well done, as they explore the nature of grief and how the death of a parent is essentially the end of an era of one’s life. Between these bookends is one long flashback to Hampl’s childhood, and this is where she loses her sense of narration and lets the book meander with no purpose in sight.
Hampl grew up in St. Paul, where her father owned a flower shop, and where she claims to have led a sheltered life in which she and her brother were “spoiled with love.” In school I was always told to “show, don’t tell” when it came to writing. With this book, you can expect a heaping helping of telling and a small side dish of showing.
For example, the “spoiled with love” quote is a frail statement that hangs in the air; for never, at any point, does she provide examples to support this claim. In fact, that’s how she spends the majority of the book; claiming, time and again, that her father wished to preserve his little girl’s innocence, while hardly providing examples of such an upbringing; mentioning, but never delving into, her rebellious, pot-smoking teenage years. By telling and not showing, Hampl merely skims the surface and neglects to add substance to her general claims, thereby preventing the book from being interesting.
It seems as though Hampl does not know how to fill in the middle portion of the book, so she simply repeats what she has said before, multiple times, just in case her readers didn’t get the point. I found myself thinking, “Yes, we know your father wanted you to be innocent. You’ve said that already. Next?” Hampl repeats time and again that she feels a sense of duty in her role as a daughter, but hardly, if ever, delves into why or how she fulfilled that duty, or why she chose to remain living in St. Paul after aspiring to move away.
All the while Hampl portrays her parents as two-dimensional stock characters: her father as the idealist and her mother as the pragmatist. At times it seems as if her goal is to simply paint a beautiful portrait of a cutesy child’s fantasy; an idealized childhood filled with pretty flowers and populated by quirky stock characters that never develop into real people.
The novel as a whole is superficially pleasing if you enjoy poetry, particularly poetry that is art for art’s sake. No doubt Hampl has a way with words, and if she could only make the substance match the style, she’d have it made.
Read this and other reviews at my blog: http://zeitgeist-sacha1689.blogspot.com/
That’s what someone should have told Patricia Hampl before she wrote The Florist’s Daughter.
The book cover, as well as Hampl’s prose, is certainly pretty. Unfortunately the old adage about looks being skin deep applies here. The contents behind the cover are pretty words, pretty prose, little substance and a lack of direction. A few not-so-pretty words that come to mind are monotonous, unexciting, repetitive and tedious.
The story begins and ends in the hospital room of Hampl’s dying mother, which in itself is an effective bookend for the narration. These scenes in the hospital room are relatively well done, as they explore the nature of grief and how the death of a parent is essentially the end of an era of one’s life. Between these bookends is one long flashback to Hampl’s childhood, and this is where she loses her sense of narration and lets the book meander with no purpose in sight.
Hampl grew up in St. Paul, where her father owned a flower shop, and where she claims to have led a sheltered life in which she and her brother were “spoiled with love.” In school I was always told to “show, don’t tell” when it came to writing. With this book, you can expect a heaping helping of telling and a small side dish of showing.
For example, the “spoiled with love” quote is a frail statement that hangs in the air; for never, at any point, does she provide examples to support this claim. In fact, that’s how she spends the majority of the book; claiming, time and again, that her father wished to preserve his little girl’s innocence, while hardly providing examples of such an upbringing; mentioning, but never delving into, her rebellious, pot-smoking teenage years. By telling and not showing, Hampl merely skims the surface and neglects to add substance to her general claims, thereby preventing the book from being interesting.
It seems as though Hampl does not know how to fill in the middle portion of the book, so she simply repeats what she has said before, multiple times, just in case her readers didn’t get the point. I found myself thinking, “Yes, we know your father wanted you to be innocent. You’ve said that already. Next?” Hampl repeats time and again that she feels a sense of duty in her role as a daughter, but hardly, if ever, delves into why or how she fulfilled that duty, or why she chose to remain living in St. Paul after aspiring to move away.
All the while Hampl portrays her parents as two-dimensional stock characters: her father as the idealist and her mother as the pragmatist. At times it seems as if her goal is to simply paint a beautiful portrait of a cutesy child’s fantasy; an idealized childhood filled with pretty flowers and populated by quirky stock characters that never develop into real people.
The novel as a whole is superficially pleasing if you enjoy poetry, particularly poetry that is art for art’s sake. No doubt Hampl has a way with words, and if she could only make the substance match the style, she’d have it made.
Read this and other reviews at my blog: http://zeitgeist-sacha1689.blogspot.com/
May 29, 2019
“Love and flowers, death and flowers.” Her mother’s final illness led Hampl to reflect on her upbringing in St. Paul, Minnesota as the daughter of an Irish Catholic library clerk and a Czech florist. I loved the poetic way in which she writes about small-town life, her tense relationship with her mother, and helping out in her father’s flower shop:
“These apparently ordinary people in our ordinary town, living faultlessly ordinary lives … why do I persist in thinking—knowing—they weren’t ordinary at all? … Nostalgia is really a kind of loyalty”
“the daughterly duel of distance”
“it was my father’s domain, but it was also marvelously other, this place heavy with the drowsy scent of velvet-petaled roses and Provençal freesias in the middle of winter, the damp-earth spring fragrance of just-watered azaleas and cyclamen”
“We glided across the ice rink of family life, trusting we left no gashes as we went round and round the tended circuit of days. We had faith—in everything. Faith was a form of stasis, not transcendence. We didn’t live in a movie, the narrative building to climax. We lived I photographs, as nostalgics do, a sweet moment snapped and set on the mantel by the piano where it keeps time at bay, covertly aging in full sight. We believed in love and happiness, and small domestic pleasures, duty, and work. Work especially.”
“the Trinity I held sacred—beauty, the idea of elsewhere, and the holy ghost of history.”
“These apparently ordinary people in our ordinary town, living faultlessly ordinary lives … why do I persist in thinking—knowing—they weren’t ordinary at all? … Nostalgia is really a kind of loyalty”
“the daughterly duel of distance”
“it was my father’s domain, but it was also marvelously other, this place heavy with the drowsy scent of velvet-petaled roses and Provençal freesias in the middle of winter, the damp-earth spring fragrance of just-watered azaleas and cyclamen”
“We glided across the ice rink of family life, trusting we left no gashes as we went round and round the tended circuit of days. We had faith—in everything. Faith was a form of stasis, not transcendence. We didn’t live in a movie, the narrative building to climax. We lived I photographs, as nostalgics do, a sweet moment snapped and set on the mantel by the piano where it keeps time at bay, covertly aging in full sight. We believed in love and happiness, and small domestic pleasures, duty, and work. Work especially.”
“the Trinity I held sacred—beauty, the idea of elsewhere, and the holy ghost of history.”
February 16, 2009
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 the real things, which were the unsayable things. That was odd--that the unsayable things could be expressed and required expression more than anything BECAUSE they were inexpressible. Music, poems could do this. They went beyond 'communication.' A spreading comfort rippled from this fact, and something of terror too. Poetry and music weren't 'stories', weren't social as fiction was social. They came up behind you, grabbed you, made you part of what they said."
Well, there are a lot of quotes I'd love to add from this book. Its aura continues to affect me.
"Only poetry and music, it seemed, could express the real things, which were the unsayable things. That was odd--that the unsayable things could be expressed and required expression more than anything BECAUSE they were inexpressible. Music, poems could do this. They went beyond 'communication.' A spreading comfort rippled from this fact, and something of terror too. Poetry and music weren't 'stories', weren't social as fiction was social. They came up behind you, grabbed you, made you part of what they said."
Well, there are a lot of quotes I'd love to add from this book. Its aura continues to affect me.
October 28, 2010
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 includes "daughter", there was little to discover about the author. I would say that the book is more The Florist's Wife rather than the daughter. I had a hard time sticking with it, even with the beautiful writing. I have to admit I even skimmed the last half of it.
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 includes "daughter", there was little to discover about the author. I would say that the book is more The Florist's Wife rather than the daughter. I had a hard time sticking with it, even with the beautiful writing. I have to admit I even skimmed the last half of it.
March 1, 2012
According to the biographical info on the back flap of this book, this is Patricia Hampl's fifth memoir. I haven't read any of the others, and since this one left me quite underwhelmed, I'm not sure that I would.
A memoir doesn't absolutely require a narrative arc, but I think that a reader might find the presence of one more rewarding, and this book really doesn't have it. Patricia's presence at her mother's bedside on the night of her death is the framing device for her recollections of growing up in St. Paul, Minnesota in the mid-20th century, the Baby-Boom-era younger child and second-generation American daughter of a mixed-ethnicity Catholic couple. The differing worldviews of her parental cultures - Irish on her mother's side, Czech on her father's - and the Catholicism both figure prominently in her upbringing and how she learns to interact with the world. As a second/third-generation Catholic-raised daughter of mixed European ethnicity myself - in my case, Italian mother and Austro-Hungarian father - this was probably the aspect of her story that I related to most. My father still characterizes most people he meets by their ethnic origin, and stereotypes based on ethnicity were part of everyday life for us.
Patricia talks about both her parents very much from a daughter's perspective, as she lived out the old saying that "a daughter's a daughter all of her life." She ended up as primary caretaker for both her parents till they died, and despite all her dreams of escape into the Great World, still lives in St. Paul to this day.
The Book Club member who chose this thought that it was a mother-daughter memoir, so we didn't quite get what we expected from it. It's a well-written book, but I just didn't find it particularly engaging. It's relatively short, but I found it slow going, and her parents never really became vivid to me. Granted, she's writing about their essentially ordinary lives, and that's got to be a challenge.
I wish I'd liked this book more than I did, but it just didn't seem to have much to it, and that was pretty much the consensus among Book Club members.
A memoir doesn't absolutely require a narrative arc, but I think that a reader might find the presence of one more rewarding, and this book really doesn't have it. Patricia's presence at her mother's bedside on the night of her death is the framing device for her recollections of growing up in St. Paul, Minnesota in the mid-20th century, the Baby-Boom-era younger child and second-generation American daughter of a mixed-ethnicity Catholic couple. The differing worldviews of her parental cultures - Irish on her mother's side, Czech on her father's - and the Catholicism both figure prominently in her upbringing and how she learns to interact with the world. As a second/third-generation Catholic-raised daughter of mixed European ethnicity myself - in my case, Italian mother and Austro-Hungarian father - this was probably the aspect of her story that I related to most. My father still characterizes most people he meets by their ethnic origin, and stereotypes based on ethnicity were part of everyday life for us.
Patricia talks about both her parents very much from a daughter's perspective, as she lived out the old saying that "a daughter's a daughter all of her life." She ended up as primary caretaker for both her parents till they died, and despite all her dreams of escape into the Great World, still lives in St. Paul to this day.
The Book Club member who chose this thought that it was a mother-daughter memoir, so we didn't quite get what we expected from it. It's a well-written book, but I just didn't find it particularly engaging. It's relatively short, but I found it slow going, and her parents never really became vivid to me. Granted, she's writing about their essentially ordinary lives, and that's got to be a challenge.
I wish I'd liked this book more than I did, but it just didn't seem to have much to it, and that was pretty much the consensus among Book Club members.
August 20, 2011
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 understand why we weren't going deeper into how we could accept these things and explore the things we could change. "Like a good writer, refusing to explain what she had laid out for all to see." I was happy to take the taxi ride home with her and be done with this journey.
June 5, 2013
This was a beautifully written memoir about the author's parents. The author grew up on St.Paul's West End and Crocus Hill neighborhoods and the book contains wonderful descriptions of St.Paul and it's neighborhoods. My grandparents lived on the West End, and I appraise property there now, so the neighborhood evokes particular memories for me. There were also some uncanny similarities with my parents lives that were particularly touching to me. I enjoyed the book very much, so much so that I started another one of Patricia Hampl's memoirs, A Romantic Education.
May 25, 2011
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 on her mother. It's slow, reverential, realistic, analytical, and even a little magical.
I copy this next line out of context just so I remember sort of why she became a writer. Knowing all you know about her and her parents when you reach this point in the book, it's a sweet revelation. And I'd thought I was his girl. p. 200
And at the end: 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. p. 218 That's more potent in context too but you'll have to read the book for the weight of it.
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 on her mother. It's slow, reverential, realistic, analytical, and even a little magical.
I copy this next line out of context just so I remember sort of why she became a writer. Knowing all you know about her and her parents when you reach this point in the book, it's a sweet revelation. And I'd thought I was his girl. p. 200
And at the end: 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. p. 218 That's more potent in context too but you'll have to read the book for the weight of it.
June 30, 2008
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 that her daughter never confided in her, who wanted her daughter to open her “cold heart,” said upon learning that Hampl was writing this book: “Good. It’s about time.” I think you will find that Mary Catherine Ann Teresa Eleanor Marum Hampl was right."
highly recommended.
highly recommended.
November 11, 2013
I only read the first fifty pages, and found absolutely nothing in this book that would compel me to continue. I only read that far because it was a book club choice, and I thought if everyone talked it up, I would finish. But nobody liked it.
Basically, it was like a lady I didn't know suddenly started complaining to me about her life, but I had no way of connecting with her at all, and there wasn't any story to it. It was just a stranger complaining. I was bored.
Basically, it was like a lady I didn't know suddenly started complaining to me about her life, but I had no way of connecting with her at all, and there wasn't any story to it. It was just a stranger complaining. I was bored.
September 23, 2009
I can see why other people would like this memoir but it just didn't sit well with me. It's very poetic, abstract, and non-linear, and I couldn't relate to many of the themes. It's a beautiful book that just isn't my style.
February 16, 2011
A sweet memoir, and a beautifully written, nostalgic look at St. Paul in mid 20th century by a highly skilled writer. Poetic prose and language. If you just marvel at fine writing and amazingly gifted turn of phrasing.
July 29, 2024
I feel sort of bad giving this book such a low rating because it's so well written, but I just didn't care for it. I can't say it any better than some of the other reviews I read after reading this book. You may like this book and not agree with me. I found this book annoying because it just rambles on and doesn't really go anywhere. I kept waiting for more information that never came.
August 8, 2015
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 bound to them somehow there - the middle class, the mid-West, the middling dreams.
I'm curious why she entitled the book, "The Florist's Daughter," as I felt throughout the book that she actually was more like her exacting, wordy mother than her dreamy, trusting father.
Her tale of her aging parents is heartbreaking, yet I felt that Hampl never wallowed in self-pity. Instead, she just told the story of one Midwest family as it reached its end.
Bah! I'm doing a terrible job describing this.
I look forward to book club to see how others experienced this work. It reminded me that no matter how "ordinary" a life may seem - everyone has a story.
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 bound to them somehow there - the middle class, the mid-West, the middling dreams.
I'm curious why she entitled the book, "The Florist's Daughter," as I felt throughout the book that she actually was more like her exacting, wordy mother than her dreamy, trusting father.
Her tale of her aging parents is heartbreaking, yet I felt that Hampl never wallowed in self-pity. Instead, she just told the story of one Midwest family as it reached its end.
Bah! I'm doing a terrible job describing this.
I look forward to book club to see how others experienced this work. It reminded me that no matter how "ordinary" a life may seem - everyone has a story.
Read
February 5, 2009"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 note that the title is somewhat misleading and that some of Hampl's language is a bit over the top, but these were minor complaints. Honest, humorous, and heartfelt, Hampl's storytelling shines in what the New York Times Book Review calls her "finest, most powerful book yet."
This is an excerpt from a review published in Bookmarks magazine.
June 13, 2011
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 and the florist's growing up years or something along those lines. Left the book being a bit on the bummed side. Unlikely I'll read again.
Honestly, this book kind of put me off the author. And I'm the kind who likes to follow authors -- if I liked one book, I'll look into other books he/she has written.
Honestly, this book kind of put me off the author. And I'm the kind who likes to follow authors -- if I liked one book, I'll look into other books he/she has written.
October 7, 2012
Despite the geographical location of Old St. Paul, I found much similarity in Patricia Hampl's story, with my own upbringing. And I loved how she went back and forth in her memories between the influences and personalities of each of her unique and distinct parents. It seems a universal story about the role of the daughter, and certainly rang true with my life, as my mother was also the one who lingered with terminal conditions after my father died from congestive heart disease, and I became her primary support system during those long years of widowhood. For me, reading this memoir helped to clarify how the choices that my parents made, and the values they tried to instill on my brother and myself, may very well have been made based on their experiences as descendants of immigrants, and of having lived through the Depression years.
May 31, 2013
This beautifully written memoir is the work of the florist's daughter whose Czech father accepted her as a poet, and whose Irish mother constantly reminded her she was a writer. A writer, a poet --small difference compared to the major differences between her parents'cultural backgrounds, outlooks on life, and relationships with their daughter. Their life stories are told with humor, compassion and a unique insight that allows the reader to be there, to really know these people. There isn't anyone who has aging parents who can't relate to this memoir. Additionally, the setting, St. Paul, MN from the 50's through the 90's, provided a special interest to me. Even though this memoir does not reveal much about the florist's daughter herself, it is her view and writing style that makes this a four-star book.
July 20, 2017
I picked up this book because I am going to be at an event where this author is featured. I probably wouldn't have, otherwise, as I don't read many memoirs. Especially memoirs by poets. Don't read many poets, either, if I must be honest. But this book has been a beautiful little surprise of a treat. Readable, but literary. An ordinary midwestern life turned into a gorgeous, thoughtful tale. I've always thought of poetry as equal part hoity-toity talk and secret voodoo spells, but reading this book, which could be subtitled "how to build a poet of your own, using children you already have lying around the house" has helped me think more clearly about poetry itself. That alone made it a worthwhile read.
January 23, 2011
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 her florist father, Hampl appreciates beauty and leaves us a stunning yet tender account of imagery. Her accomplished use of language will leave you moved and wanting more.
October 28, 2010
Hampl makes me feel nostalgic for St Paul, though I only live ten minutes from there. Honestly. The way she describes her childhood, her growing up Catholic and Irish and Czech reminds me of my childhood, growing up Catholic and Irish and German. The death of her parents is something I dread with my own parents. And I long to escape, to go somewhere, to do something important, but will probably, ultimately, never truly be able to leave Old St Paul- I still call Macy's Dayton's, and I go to Landmark and the Library that's named for the Empire Builder that lives on the top of the hill.
January 18, 2009
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.
April 3, 2011
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.
July 30, 2011
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.
October 14, 2015
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.
February 22, 2010
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.
June 10, 2010
I wanted to like this book more than I did. I wanted to be committed to the people and wrapped up in their life. I just wasn't. But that didn't stop me from crying when her mom died. I mean, how can you read a death scene and not cry!?
January 4, 2010
I've been reading memoirs to gear up for reading a really challenging memoir. This one was beautifully done; really gives a sense of place and relationships.
August 25, 2015
Patricia Hampl is an artist with words. The page is her easel, her vocabulary her paints and her syntax is her brush. This memoir is written beautifully and honestly.
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