historical fiction, contemporary fiction
The Secret Life of Sunflowers contains two stories—one contemporary and one historical. The contemporary story centers around Emsley, a young auctioneer whose grandmother dies and leaves behind a mystery about the identity of Emsley’s grandfather’s identity. The historical story is about Johanna Bonger, Vincent Van Gogh’s sister-in-law, who is determined to see her husband’s vision of making Vincent famous become reality after he dies.
I found both storylines equally engaging—both women were likeable and determined to make the best of their situations. I was curious to see how their stories would intersect. I felt that Marta Molnar (which is, apparently, a pseudonym for Dana Marton since historical fiction is not her normal genre) made Emsley a bit clueless about things for the sake of drama. The reader immediately understands the character Bram better than she does even though her story is told from her point of view. But, of course, we don’t complain too much about reading along until Emsley catches up because we all enjoy happy endings.
I’ve read two novels about Vincent Van Gogh so there wasn’t anything new in Jo’s story about the artist. However, I hadn’t known anything about Jo and felt Molnar did a nice job painting a realistic picture of her world and describing the types of challenges she endured which were very typical of her time. She pushed boundaries as a woman and a single mother. She had loads of determination and grit—she simply would not take “no” for an answer. She would not believe that things would not turn out as she envisioned despite having suffered significant failures. I’m really glad to have learned about this amazing woman!
Emsley was inspired by Jo’s story and became more driven to succeed at her own goals.
As a side note, I really liked the characters’ names in this novel, including several that are held by people in my own family—both first and last names.
The audiobook narrator, Kendra Murray, had a nice vocal repertoire and was a good voice actor. My main complaint was that her tone of voice used for Emsley grated on me a bit at first. I can’t explain why—it just wasn’t that pleasant to my ear. But I did get used to her gradually as I became more invested in the story. I’ll give her an A-.
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