The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart

There’s an aching heart beating through author Holly Ringland’s narrative that although at times seems almost broken, is stitched back together with shards of optimism that offer constant hope. These are characters we love, care about and want to nurture. I wouldn’t mind meeting a few of them and definitely would love to go to the flower farm the first half of the story is set in and join in the long lunch.

The book opens with Alice Hart, a deep thinking, book-loving and traumatised nine-year-old who is devoted to her mother and terrified of her father, sitting at her eucalyptus desk reading. Soon a shocking fire in their seaside home leaves Alice orphaned. When she wakes up in hospital, Alice is unable to speak and while her body mends her voice does not. Mute and grief-stricken, she is collected by the grandma she never knew she had and driven miles inland to the flower farm whisky-drinking Granny June runs.

This place is special, not just stunning with blooms aplenty, but also a safe place for women craving peace. Here, Alice learns the language of flowers and starts to trust again. But when she hits her twenties the delicate balance of Alice’s world is disturbed once more and she runs away to the desert. What happens next is utterly compelling, as this extraordinary young woman tries to unpick the secrets of her past and outrun their implications. “Alice is very dear to me,” Holly tells The Weekly. “I found it hard to finish writing and let her go, but the flip side is sitting back in total awe and wonder, watching how she as a character is going on to find a life of her own in the world separate to me.”

Holly’s writing is at once raw and poetic and seems deeply personal. “The genesis of this novel was trauma,” she reveals. “I’ve lived with male-perpetrated violence for a lot of my life, which silenced my voice, courage and the dream of being a writer. Here Holly uses “fiction as the lie that tells the truth,” she says.

I suspect the end result was incredibly cathartic for Holly; it’s also a vivid and brave tale of love, loss and inner power.