Today we take a look at a hybrid biography/autobiography of a fictional woman, as an early scientist in the field of botany.
My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.
Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.
The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert B
This novel encompasses the fictional life story of Alma Whittaker. Born in 1800 Philadelphia, the daughter of a wealthy botanical explorer/business man, and a Dutch mother who comes from a family of Dutch horticulturalists. We follow her life from her childhood to a ripe old age of 80. Raised in wealth on a large estate outside of Philadelphia, she is encouraged to explore the natural world from an early age. Gifted with the plain speaking logical mind of her mother, and the drive for knowledge of her father, over the course of decades she becomes a respected botanist within a circle of scientist of similar interest, despite being a woman, eventually becoming the world's most respected expert on mosses.
As I mentioned in my brief intro, this book reads, in parts, like the biography of a real person. Indeed, like many biographies, the first 80 some pages doesn't even concern her at all, but rather describes the early career of her father, written in the style of a popular biography, which is to say with wit and charm. Though it includes many details of the time and places, it still moves nicely along. As does the whole book, for the most part. It is told as a biographer might tell the tale - "told" being the operative word, rather than shown. However, it also reveals many intimate details and thoughts of Alma Whittaker that would only be known to Alma Whittaker, and set down as a very candid modern autobiographer, thus its somewhat of a hybrid between the two types of biographies. It also presents scenes and conversations between people, as one would find in a novel, so that respect, it is a double hybrid; biography/autobiography/novel.
I found this book mentioned in one of James Harris' recent posts. He describes it as science fiction - not as the type of book we think of when we hear science fiction, but as a book of fiction that concerns itself with science. And that is what is it is; a story about about science and the times, as well about the role of women in the world, the world's expectations of them. And about the women who defy those expectations.
Perhaps the most profound thing that I came away with, after reading this book, is how deficient we are these days in new things to discover. Tangible things, things we can see, touch, understand. This book, has Alma's father sending people around the world to discover and ship home new plants to describe and grow in his greenhouses. Tangible new discoveries. Not software code or quantum mechanics. Oh, I am sure there are still a million things to discover, but they have become increasingly esoteric, things so small in scope that it takes years and PhDs to discover, study and appreciate them. These days it seems that fantasy fiction has come to overshadows science fiction, and I have to wonder that is, in part, because there seems to be so few things left to discover in science, things that would interest more than a PhD searching for grant money.
Anyways, back to the book. Elizabeth Gilbert has written a very entertaining novel, despite reading more like a work of non-fiction for much of the time. Perhaps that is its strength; its biographical format allows the reader to believe that Alma Whittaker was a real person, while its very candid autobiographical makes her more than the subject of a biography written a century after the person lived. My only criticism of the book is that I think it went on too long and simply got too wordy, for my tastes in the last quarter of the book, so that I found myself skim reading parts of the story set in Tahiti. But, as usual, that's on me, not the author. I don't have the attention span I may've once had.
It's a solid read, offering a thick slice of history, science, with a glimpse of life in Tahiti as a bonus.
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