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Find the complete list of 2020 Reading Doctor prescriptions here.

The language of flowers

Synonymous with beauty, vibrant in colour, heavy with scent and redolent with memories, flowers hold great emotional and metaphorical meaning for us. These are magnified for effect in literature, whether wild or hothouse, gilded or bedewed, bearing the promise of a bud, the lushness of a bloom, the pity of a wilted stem, or the mystery of a half-remembered fragrance. These books use flowers to add colour to their prose and layers of meaning to their narratives.

· Victoria is fluent in The Language of Flowers in the debut novel from Vanessa Diffenbaugh, a talent she uses to connect to a world which has treated her very badly.

· A sheltered and privileged life in Nigeria is torn apart as the nation suffers under a military coup in Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, putting family bonds under enormous pressure.

· The first novel by Kelly Ana Morey was Bloom, about the lives and loves of the four murderous and conveniently forgetful Spry women.

· Somali model Waris Dirie is the Desert Flower of her autobiography (written with Cathleen Miller), surviving and thriving in a hostile environment.

· During the turmoil of the French Revolution, Sophie works towards cultivating an original repeat-flowering crimson rose as a hopeful symbol of the future, in Michelle de Kretser’s novel The Rose Grower.

· Amongst the flower fields and perfumeries of 18^th-century France prowls a murderer without a scent of his own, in Patrick Süskind’s gothic novel Perfume.

· Charlotte Simmonds’ collection of poetry, The World’s Fastest Flower, uses the Canadian Bunchberry Dogwood (which opens in just 0.4 milliseconds) as a metaphor for urgency, within “the suspended time of the lyric poem”.

· The Scarlet Pimpernel is a mysterious and chivalrous Englishman who rescues French aristocrats from the guillotine in Baroness Orczy’s series of popular novels.

· Umberto Eco’s first novel, The Name of the Rose, is a murder mystery set in a medieval Italian monastery, a postmodern mash-up of semiotics, biblical studies and literary theory.

· Charlie extols The Perks of Being a Wallflower in the YA coming of age novel by Stephen Chbosky, as he navigates the tricky transition between adolescence and adulthood.

· Flower bulbs are currency in Tulip Fever, by Deborah Moggach, a tale set in 17^th-century Amsterdam, where capitalism runs rampant, while art and beauty yet endure.