ABOUT
THE BOOK

2020 Longlist

After her family suffers a tragedy, nine-year-old Alice Hart is forced to leave her idyllic seaside home. She is taken in by her grandmother, June, a flower farmer who raises Alice on the language of Australian native flowers, a way to say the things that are too hard to speak.

Under the watchful eye of June and the women who run the farm, Alice settles, but grows up increasingly frustrated by how little she knows of her family’s story. In her early twenties, Alice’s life is thrown into upheaval again when she suffers devastating betrayal and loss. Desperate to outrun grief, Alice flees to the dramatically beautiful central Australian desert. In this otherworldly landscape Alice thinks she has found solace, until she meets a charismatic and ultimately dangerous man.

About the Author

Holly Ringland grew up in Northern Australia. Her essays and short fiction have been published in various anthologies and literary journals. Her debut novel, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart has sold in 24 territories around the world, winning the 2019 ABIA General Fiction Book.

Librarian’s Comments

After traumas in her childhood and young adulthood, Alice has to realise that in order to survive, the language of flowers – a way to communicate – alone can not help, she has to face the untold. The story represents abuse, loss, love, and redemption with sensitivity and vivid descriptions of the different Australian natural scenery in the background.  Katona József Library of Bács-Kiskun County, Hungary