The Florist’s Daughter by Ptricia Hampl
Reviewed by Michelle Green
In
this addictive account of her disloyal "Midwestern girlhood" and role as the
only daughter of parents who embraced "the sweet safe middle,"Hampl observes
that "nothing is harder to grasp than a relentlessly modest life." Yet in a
quietly stunning narrative that opens at her mother's deathbed, the author
looks behind the self-effacing personas of Stanislaus Hampl, a romantic
Czech who kept St. Paul's "carriage trade" in flowers, and Mary Marum Hampl,
a cynical Irishwoman who taught her how to spin a story, and offers up
profound truths about the way her parents shaped her sensibilities.
Realizing that what she craves is a kind of extravagance, a worldliness from
which her mother and father tried to shelter her, Hampl creates indelible
portraits of these shortsighted, loving people.(Four Star review)