The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart

The novel delves into aspects of Australian culture, particularly the significance of native flora and Aboriginal land, offering a perspective on the country’s heritage. Australia is authentically shown through the landscape, traditional storytelling, and characters like Ruby. The book describes countless different plants found in Australia, and Alice’s family devises specific meanings for each flower. Every chapter is named after an Australian flower with details on the plant’s meaning, how it grows, and where it grows in Australia. By using native flora and Aboriginal stories, the author establishes the novel’s setting as distinctly Australian.

Likewise, Ruby exemplifies Aboriginal culture as Alice’s teacher. Since she is a native Aboriginal person, Ruby carries the traditional stories of her ethnicity, stories she shares with Alice. The most prominent story is about Ngunytju, the goddess whose baby falls from the sky and creates a crater at the national park. As Ruby explains, the crater is the goddess’s heart, which she threw down from the sky in mourning after her child’s death. The land is sacred to the Aboriginal people, a place where they “bear witness,” “grieve,” and “honor what they have loved” (252). Ruby continues that the site is “where malukuru grows from the star mother’s heart.