Lush Library discussion

Here's a place to post your opinions, thoughts, and questions once you've finished reading. I've added a few discussion points to get us started, but do feel free to add your own. It seems like a book that's going to leave a lot unanswered, so maybe we'll be able to help each other out a bit :) Don't be shy!


What did you make of Florence? Is she an unreliable narrator? Can her perceptions of people, particularly Miss Taylor, be trusted?

Do you think anything described in the novel actually happened?

What did you think of the house staff? Did it strike you as strange that none of the servants had been with the family long enough to really know anything about the children, their uncle, or the family more widely? Could it have been intentional?

What about the police? Do you think they should have questioned more robustly the loss of both governesses, given that they were both alone with Florence shortly before their deaths? What about the death of Theo Van Hoosier? Given the history that the family seems to have (I’m thinking of the “boating accident” the father and stepmother die in, and the Housekeeper’s fall), do you think they (or Hadleigh) should investigate more thoroughly?

Can Hadleigh be trusted?

Do you think Miss Taylor is Giles’ mother? Does this explain why she was reluctant to meet the Van Hoosiers (given that they would probably have met her before), and why she wears a heavy veil into town? Is this why she places so much emphasis on Florence’s relationship to Giles being only partial? In short, is this why she seems so desperate?

What did you think of Florence’s alternative language?


If you’ve read The Turn of the Screw, how do you think Florence and Giles compares? I’ve yet to re-read TTotS, but I’m planning to do that as soon as I finish F&G. What similarities do you see, and why do you think Harding changes the names of the characters? Does Florence and Giles enhance James’ story for you?

(If you like reading stories inspired by the The Turn of the Screw, there’s another in Haunted by Joyce Carol Oates (a short story collection). It’s called Accursed Inhabitants of the House of Bly, and it’s well worth a read if you enjoy F&G.)

I actually struggled to get into this a bit at first...maybe because it felt so stark after what I'd been reading before. It's set in a big house, with very few characters, but it's this deceptive simplicity that I eventually came to love about it. There are so many other things to be wondering about, that I didn't really miss having a larger cast of characters in the end.

Perhaps surprisingly, I came to really like Florence. I, too, believe that there must be something wrong with her. It might be as simple as an overactive imagination (Florence reminds me a bit of the main character in Northanger Abbey, who imagines all sorts of things after reading too many gothic novels) , but I think perhaps it goes deeper than that. After all, no-one else saw the things she purported to see.

So, although I think Florence is inherently unreliable, there are still things I admire about her. Her strength of character, her dexterity with language, her desire to protect Giles, her almost single-minded devotion to her "secret" reading...she's a monster, certainly, but one I couldn't help feeling some sympathy for.

I'm really torn about whether any of it happened. Part of me thinks that Miss Taylor is probably Giles' mother, and that she intended to take him away. Florence's almost-recognition of the headless picture at the end made me believe that was probably the case. On the other hand, her perception of Miss Taylor was clearly warped. After all, the woman did a nice thing for Florence in allowing her to read against the wishes of her uncle, and never really did anything to openly hurt her. Added to the fact that no-one else saw anything Florence suspected, and it leaves me with doubts. Especially when similar things have clearly happened to Florence before, as with Miss Whittaker. That seems to support the mental illness theory more than anything.

One thing's for sure, it's certainly a book that's left me with questions!

I finished it and although I thought the story was really clever and well written, I didn't like it. The end was really nasty, particularly poor old Theo who had always been such a support to Florence.

I'm glad I read it, but I would be careful who I recommended it to!

Kerry wrote: "I finished it and although I thought the story was really clever and well written, I didn't like it. The end was really nasty, particularly poor old Theo who had always been such a support to Flor..."

I didn't like Theo's death much, either. After trusting him with the details of what had happened so far, it seemed strange to me that she wouldn't trust him to keep another of her secrets. She does say that he has a tendency to overdo things, like Giles, but I'm not sure that really accounts for it. It was a shame, I thought...I really came to like Theo.

It made me not like the book at all Amina, I just thought it was plain nasty.

I really agree- I started off really liking it, but then about the last 10%, I just wanted to finish it, it felt like the wrong ending to me!

Oh wow. That was not the ending I predicted at all! I came to like Theo and to have him treated so disposably was quite upsetting. I guess we needed that ending though to fully appreciate how psychologically detatched our Florence really was. I never thought that the horror ending that we knew was coming, was going to be the realisation that we had got our protagonist so very wrong.

I lay in bed last night and tried to work out who Miss Taylor was ... living or spectre? From about half way through the tale, I was convinced that Miss Taylor was the ghost of Giles' Mother and that she was there to reclaim her child and in some way seek vengeance on Florence, who I believed to have been implicated in her and her husband's death on the lake.

I've changed my mind now, after reaching the end of the story. I know there is no way of ever proving one way or another and it's up to the reader to decide what was happening for themselves. Anyway I still think that Miss Taylor was Giles' Mother but that she wasn't dead at all and that she and her husband had been involved in some scandal or other and had to abscond. I think that the 'uncle' figure was not really an uncle but the father of Florence and Giles. Florence was suffering from some kind of schizophrenia, maybe brought on my the deprivation of her parents and isolation in that old house. When her step-mother came back to kidnap her son away (back to France ... where she'd made home now), Florence imagined all the witchy bizareness, Miss Taylor walking on water and residing in mirrors etc. It would also explain her emotional detachment at the end to the deaths she'd caused.

All in all I thought it was an extremely well-crafted story, it shocked me and just when I thought I knew where the story was going. I would have preferred some of the endings to be tied a little by the writer ... a bit more explanation into Miss Taylor and why she was taking the steamboat to France. Just the answers to the history of her family, I would have been more comfortable with that.

Ness wrote: "Oh wow. That was not the ending I predicted at all! I came to like Theo and to have him treated so disposably was quite upsetting. I guess we needed that ending though to fully appreciate how ps..."

I came to believe that the 'uncle' was probably their father when Florence was looking through the photo album. At the end, though, I started to wonder whether that wasn't another of Florence's delusions. After all, we only have her word for it. I found it a tricky book like that -- I didn't know while I was reading it, and I still don't know a couple of weeks later, what I really think happened. The ending made me doubt all of the things Florence told me, which is probably an overreaction, but I was surprised by how much I'd misjudged her character. It's certainly a book I'll be thinking about for a while!

I found Florence to be quite a likeable character although I was shocked at how she changed at the end. I liked the way Theo also noticed how much she had changed at the end. She became a very scary character. I think she was so attached to Giles because he was the only one who really knew her and so when he came back from school she was determined to not let him go again. I haven’t decided about Miss Taylor. She sounded a bit like a woman in mourning and did think that maybe she had lost a child in the past so she became very attached to Giles. The only problem with that argument is the letter from Hadleigh but only her and the housekeeper saw that letter so I wonder if that existed. If it didn’t then how did she fall down the stairs? There’s definitely a lot to think about. I haven’t read Turn of the Screw but I think I’ll have to give it a go.

I'm always telling my boys "Be nice to each other, brothers and sisters are the only people in your life who will ever know what your life was like growing up, and in turn really know YOU" I think this was the case with Florence and this is why she protected and coveted Giles to such extremes. I agree with Ness on everything: I think Mrs Taylor was Giles's mother, all the time Florence was seeing the governess leaning over Giles saying "I could just eat you" I thought I have said that to my boys so many times. I think the uncle was actually their father, near the beginning Florence says that her uncle had been in love with a woman once but she had gone away to get an education and then found that she felt more educated than the uncle *will look again in the morning to reference this* but I think Mrs Taylor and the uncle could easily have been married it could all be a cover for a divorce or seperation *not sure on divorce laws at the time* I'm not happy about Theo at all as I really did grow to like him, and like Amina I could also imagine them as a couple. I was actually sat reading on the bed saying "No No No" like you do when you're watching a film I'm pretty devastated tbh lol. Will come back to this in the morning as it's late and I'm still a bit upset about it. :(

I reacted just the same to the ending Sam. I wanted to slam the book down and shout 'No'. It wasn't the ending I wanted and I felt a bit 'Oh Florence you've cheated me'.

I gave F&G 5 stars but I almost knocked a star off for making me so sad at the end!

I really enjoyed this book. I do think that Miss Taylor was Giles's mother, and Florence turned really nasty at the end, especially towards Theo. I wonder if Florence had anything to do with the death of the first Governess, Miss Richardson??

I loved the twist at the end, poor little Florence and the big bad witch of a ghostly governess gets turned on it's head. Also agree with Ness, good review - it's the detatchment whilst killing her best friend that really hit home for me. When you look back over the book knowing what Florence is really like it puts things in a completely different perspective - the eerie wailing is actually just a mother singing to her little boy

It's clever, isn't it? The ending kind of upsets how you've been seeing the whole thing.