The Florist's Daughter by Patricia Hampl

Praise
Patricia Hampl writes the best memoirs of any writer in the English language.
Pat Conroy

Introduction
Award-winning author Patricia Hampl now takes us to the heart of her
Midwestern girlhood. She describes her debonair fathers passion for
flowers and the artistry he wrought for customers as a lifelong florist
in St. Paul, Minnesota. Emerging from the Great Depression on the
fringes of the middle class, he was eventually able to buy the shop
from its aristocratic owners, with nearly disastrous results. Evoking
the delicate balance of optimism and caution, modern life and old-
world nostalgia, that characterized America in the wake of World War
II, Hampls parents also embodied two distinctly different
immigration stories. Her fathers Czechoslovakian heritage was sometimes at odds with her
mothers Irish legacies: The Irish lived the dangerous dreams of the imagination, Hampl
writes, and if politics failed them, religion never did. Not so on the Czech side [of town] where
even heaven was suspect. Her mothers dreams were often tinged with demands for retribution,
while her father would quietly accept even the most unjust turns of fate. In stirring scenes,
Hampl describes her mothers strength in the face of breast cancer, from which she emerged with
a passion for traveling alone to the green hills of her ancestral homelandexcursions that
brought Irish lore to life with walks down ancient lanes and repeated pilgrimages to The Book of
Kells.
This is a story of universal struggles and the pursuit of the American dream, and, most of all, of
being a daughter to the end.
This guide is designed to enhance your experience of The Florists Daughter. We hope it will
enrich your reading groups exploration of this lush and magical memoir.

Questions and Topics for Discussion

1. In the opening of The Florists Daughter, Hampl weaves scenes of the past with images of the
long good-bye she shares with her aged mother. How do these opening scenes affect you? Why
is this storytelling style so powerful?

2. What were the most significant values that Hampls parents tried to impart to her? Which of
their values had a lasting impact? Which ones became outdated?

3. How would you characterize the authors relationship with her brother? In what ways are their
personalities different? What bonds do they share near the end of their parents lives? What
distinctions did the Hampls make between the way sons and daughters should be raised?

4. Discuss the symbolic role of flowers throughout the memoir. What is special about Mr.
Hampls line of work? How was his outlook on life shaped by his being a dealer of roses sent to
lovers or luxurious splashes of annuals installed in upper-class flower beds? Did he understand
how to nurture people as well as he nurtured plants?

5. What aspects of the small-business world described in The Florists Daughter have vanished?
Has the culture of employees changed much? How would the problem of the Christmas swindler
be resolved in the twenty-first century?

6. Though united by Catholicism and a young romance, Hampls parents overcame differences in
culture and temperament to forge a lasting marriage. In what ways did they complete one
another? What might the author mean at the end of chapter four, when she writes that unlike
Mother adrift in her airy nothings, [my father] was happier outside of language. . . . He brought
this silence, an aura of quiet, to the flowers he arranged. But he didnt arrange them. It was
himself he arranged?

7. Hampls father made several unlucky decisions, such as the year he tried to sell expensive
imported crches but (as Leo the Lion predicted) faced a problem with the theft of baby Jesuses.
Was Mr. Hampl too much of a romantic to be successful in business, or is financial success a
result of other factors?

8. At the end of chapter five, the author describes her mother as learning to level the world with
a strangely knowing mistrust, an ice chip of irony on her slouched shoulder, while my father
wants me to stay as she was, caught in the romance of innocence. Was Hampl protected from
reality? To what extent do most parents try to recapture their own pasts through their children?

9. Discuss the various communities Hampl describes in the St. Paul of her youth. Which groups
had the most power? What was the role of religion in shaping a persons standing in the
community? Over the last few decades in the Midwest, have these distinctions dissolved into a
uniform American identity?

10. Hampl recalls her fathers perspective on the value of an education. What generation gaps
were revealed when she went to college? What turning points did she experience in her family
during this bridge to adulthood?

11. What does Hampl discover about her mother when they travel together? What enabled them
to see more authentic versions of each other as they grew older? What stood in the way of her
mothers dream to become a writer? What stood in the way of Hampls dream to follow in the
path of fellow Minnesotan Scott Fitzgerald and settle on the East Coast?

12. Discuss the experience of becoming the parent to aging parents. When Hampl asks the
doctor to treat her mother like a sixteen-year-old whos just crashed on her boyfriends
motorcycle, what is she hoping for? What aspects of her parents personalities did not fade?
Consider scenes such as the one in which Hampls father decides to purchase a new car rather
than go into hospice care.

13. In the memoirs closing sections, we are presented with thoughts about what could have
been. Hampl even discovers the possibility that when her father was a young man he might have
loved another girl more than the one he married. Why is it important to maintain myths about our
parents? What is the best way to resolve the differences between a childs recollections of her
mother and father and the parents memories of themselves?

14. How do your memories of your parents compare to those captured in this memoir? If you
were to write a similar series of recollections, which locations, images, and realizations would
figure most prominently?

15. What threads does Hampl weave through each of her memoirs? In what ways does The
Florists Daughter enhance your appreciation for the other chapters of her life?

About the Author
PATRICIA HAMPL is the author of four previous memoirsA Romantic Education, Virgin
Time, I Could Tell You Stories, and Blue Arabesqueand two collections of poetry. She has
received a MacArthur Fellowship, among many other awards. She lives in St. Paul and is
Regents Professor of English at the University of Minnesota.