Fresh Water for Flowers: A Novel

Quirky story that centers around learning to love your life, whatever that may be. Violette is an orphan, discarded by society until she meets Philippe. She falls for him and spends there next 10 years tending him, and raising their daughter. After their daughter died, they fall apart. Finally violette learns to trust herself and becomes a heroine of her own story. Lots of French pop culture references.

I enjoyed the overall story and thought the writing was beautiful - if not a little over-done. Perhaps that's the point? The flowery writing was enjoyable at times, but mostly I found myself just rolling my eyes at the redundancy and repetition. The story was somehow secondary to the "fluff." Almost like [b:The Grapes of Wrath|18114322|The Grapes of Wrath|John Steinbeck|https:i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1375670575l/18114322._SY75_.jpg|2931549] , except the flowery writing here didn't really serve the purpose of setting the scene or giving lengthy descriptions. Every description of every person, place or thing was left up to our imagination... it was the nuance and unimportant objects given the gift of prose. I found it a bit odd and it took entirely too long to read what was a lovely story in itself.

3.5 stars overall, though if I could separate the story from the fluff it would be a solid 4.

The novelist is brilliant at exploring the difficult emotions of human love, life complexities and duality. Some translation isn’t perfect in my opinion, but the gist is understood. Definitely a recommended book if you have time. Not a fast read, but one that’s worth savouring .

Xmas gift from Amanda, fabulous read

Beautiful - but if the death of a child and it’s consequences are hard don’t read it.