For Love of a Rose, by Antonia Ridge REVIEW

For Love of a Rose, story of the creation of the famous Peace Rose, by Antonia Ridge.

“Any other time that wonderful feeling would have then caught at both their hearts as it always did at moments such as this, when something told them that this was one of the dearest, the most beautiful things about their love for each other. And it would always be like this, they would love each other and roses to the end of their lives, the one love so closely entwined with the other that there could be no separating one from the other, ever,”

It was a sweet, romantic, and heartwarming story. It was not only the story of the creation of roses, but also a true story of four generations of two rose-lovers and love-growers families (the Meillands and Paolinos) linked forever in one family –all by love of the rose.

This story set in Chamboeuf, a quiet village near the city of Lyons, France in its 1900s. it was interesting to see Parisian’s lives at that time, where women did the housekeeping, lay down her life for her family. Sometimes, I thought that that was something that made a woman –how sweet and peaceful it would be to keep the house and make everything ready for my family, but at the second thought, I realized that it’s hardly possible to be done at this time, where women insist on being independent and build their own carrier to prove that they’re exist.

Another thing that attract me was that at that time, they put a name on roses, as they believe that ‘a good name, for a rose, is better than any gold medal,’ The names given are: the scarlet ‘Jean Liabaud’, the golden-yellow ‘Duchesse de Ausstädt’, the violet-scented ‘Sarah Bernhardt’, and the famous ‘Peace Rose’; “a glorious rose with its pale gold, cream and ivory petals blending to a lightly ruffled edge of delicate carmine, which its name represented the world’s greatest desire after the Second World War end: Peace.

This 252-page book also told us the struggle in creating new kind of roses, from selecting the seeds; handling them with such a care; cross-pollinating them; propagating; eliminating the bad-quality; and then picking them at dawn where the dew still on their buds. And it also told us how Frances Meilland fought for the patent name of a rose in France, which caused a problem among the hybridists or rose-growers.

It was nice to have chance to read this romantic story, but there were some words or contexts that I did not understand, like red-letter occasion. I don’t know what it is. And there were some words or sentences in French which hadn’t been translated into English, like “Oh, vieni pezzettino mio! Oh, bambino mio!”,”Stupendo! Magnifico!”, “mais … mais… qu’as-tu?”

I felt quite curious about the meaning, but it didn’t affect my result about this book: good, awesome, and worth reading! So, happy reading!