The Language of Flowers (novel) language of flowers—a long-forgotten and mysterious way of communication—with her firsthand knowledge of the travails of the foster-care system." For Weeks, the "novel is both enchanting and cruel, full of beauty and anger." "The New York Times" compared the novel to something "Dickens might have come up with, had Dickens been deeply interested in flower arranging." SFGate called the novel "an unexpectedly beautiful book about an ugly subject: children who grow up without families, and what becomes of them in the absence of unconditional love." Waltrous compares the novel to "Jane Eyre", identifying the novel as part of the "story
In the Name of the Father (novel) alleviated throughout by humor and poignancy."-Jerre Mangione of The Philadelphia Bulletin "A novel about coming of age in working-class Chicago during the 1950s and early 1960s, In the Name of the Father chronicles the childhood and adolescence of Tonto Schwartz, son of an Italian mother and a Jewish father who dies when Tonto is an infant, leaving as his only legacy his son's apparently jokey name. Tony Ardizzone's first novel (the author is 29) is dense with particular details of Tonto's world—the texture of his Catholic education, the character and qualities of his young cronies, the sociology of his tough