The Signature of All Things
London : Edbury Publishing : 2010Description: 500 Pages : 25cmContent type: text Media type: unmediated Carrier type: volume001: 28292ISBN: 9780143125846Subject(s): Novel | Fiction | Contemporary FictionDDC classification: 823 GILItem type | Current library | Collection | Call number | Copy number | Status | Date due | Barcode | |
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Book | MAIN LIBRARY Book | 813.54 GIL (Browse shelf(Opens below)) | 1 | Available | 100275 |
Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
A glorious, sweeping novel of desire, ambition, and the thirst for knowledge, from the # 1 New York Times bestselling author of Eat Pray Love, Big Magic, and City of Girls
In The Signature of All Things, Elizabeth Gilbert returns to fiction, inserting her inimitable voice into an enthralling story of love, adventure and discovery. Spanning much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the novel follows the fortunes of the extraordinary Whittaker family as led by the enterprising Henry Whittaker--a poor-born Englishman who makes a great fortune in the South American quinine trade, eventually becoming the richest man in Philadelphia. Born in 1800, Henry's brilliant daughter, Alma (who inherits both her father's money and his mind), ultimately becomes a botanist of considerable gifts herself. As Alma's research takes her deeper into the mysteries of evolution, she falls in love with a man named Ambrose Pike who makes incomparable paintings of orchids and who draws her in the exact opposite direction--into the realm of the spiritual, the divine, and the magical. Alma is a clear-minded scientist; Ambrose a utopian artist--but what unites this unlikely couple is a desperate need to understand the workings of this world and the mechanisms behind all life.
Exquisitely researched and told at a galloping pace, The Signature of All Things soars across the globe--from London to Peru to Philadelphia to Tahiti to Amsterdam, and beyond. Along the way, the story is peopled with unforgettable characters: missionaries, abolitionists, adventurers, astronomers, sea captains, geniuses, and the quite mad. But most memorable of all, it is the story of Alma Whittaker, who--born in the Age of Enlightenment, but living well into the Industrial Revolution--bears witness to that extraordinary moment in human history when all the old assumptions about science, religion, commerce, and class were exploding into dangerous new ideas. Written in the bold, questing spirit of that singular time, Gilbert's wise, deep, and spellbinding tale is certain to capture the hearts and minds of readers.
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Library Journal Review
Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love) returns to fiction with a sprawling 19th-century saga about a young botanist, Alma Whittaker. Alma's fascination with plants (mosses in particular), combined with her recently broken heart, leads her from her birthplace of Philadelphia to Tahiti and, eventually, to the formulation of her "Theory of Competitive Alteration." Substitute finches for mosses and the Galapagos Islands for Tahiti, and you will see where Alma is headed with her ideas about how plant life evolves in order to survive. Beautifully read by the English actress Juliet Stevenson, this audiobook encompasses Alma's experiences with natural science, love, loss, and enlightenment and delivers a cracking good story in the process. -VERDICT Highly recommended. ["Gilbert's (Stern Men) first novel in 13 years gets off to a strong and compelling start but loses its way midpoint; awkward plot points make the second half feel at times like another book entirely," read the less impressed review of the Viking hc, LJ 10/1/13.]-Wendy Galgan, St. Francis Coll., Brooklyn (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.Publishers Weekly Review
From the author of Eat, Pray, Love comes this sweeping tale of one family's journey from rags to riches. Spanning two centuries and set in numerous countries, the novel follows the exploits of the Whittaker family, beginning with Henry Whittaker, an impoverished man from England who makes his fortune in South America. With such a massive narrative task at hand, narrator Stevenson never ceases to impress in this lengthy yet enriching performance. Her English accent and sensitive but firm reading perfectly matches the author's prose. The reading is clear and steady, and Stevenson creates a sense of intimacy between herself and the listener that never dissipates during the course of this audio edition. A Viking hardcover. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Gilbert, the author of the phenomenally successful memoir Eat, Pray, Love (2006), returns to fiction with her first novel in 13 years, and what a novel it is! Taking her sweet time and digressing at will into areas ranging from botany to spiritualism to illustration, she tells the rich, highly satisfying story of scholar Alma Whittaker. Born to Henry Whittaker, the richest man in Philadelphia, who rose from his station as the son of a lowly gardener to an import tycoon, Alma has the benefit of wealth and books, spending hours learning Latin and Greek and studying the natural world. But her plain appearance and erudition seem to foretell a lonely life until she meets gifted artist Ambrose Pike. Their intense intellectual connection results in marriage, but Ambrose's deep but unorthodox spiritual beliefs prevent them from truly connecting. Alma, who has never traveled out of Philadelphia, embarks on an odyssey that takes her from Tahiti to Holland, during which she learns much about the ways of the world and her own complicated nature. Gilbert, in supreme command of her material, effortlessly invokes the questing spirit of the nineteenth century, when amateur explorers, naturalists, and enthusiasts were making major contributions to progress. Beautifully written and imbued with a reverence for science and for learning, this is a must-read. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: The publisher is pulling out all the stops for the high-profile author, including both print and online campaigns and an author tour; Gilbert's celebrity may also draw off-the-book-page interest.--Wilkinson, Joanne Copyright 2010 BooklistKirkus Book Review
Gilbert's sweeping saga of Henry Whittaker and his daughter Alma offers an allegory for the great, rampant heart of the 19th century. All guile, audacity and intelligence, Whittaker, born in a dirt-floored hovel to a Kew Garden arborist, comes under the tutelage of the celebrated Sir Joseph Banks. Banks employs Whittaker to gather botany samples from exotic climes. Even after discovering chinchona--quinine's source--in Peru, Henry's snubbed for nomination to the Royal Society of Fellows by Banks. Instead, Henry trades cultivation secrets to the Dutch and earns riches in Java growing chinchona. Henry marries Beatrix van Devender, daughter of Holland's renowned Hortus Botanicus's curator. They move to Philadelphia, build an estate and birth Alma in 1800. Gilbert's descriptions of Henry's childhood, expeditions and life at the luxurious White Acre estate are superb. The dense, descriptive writing seems lifted from pages written two centuries past, yet it's laced with spare ironical touches and elegant phrasing--a hummingbird, "a jeweled missile, it seemed, fired from a tiny cannon." Characters leap into life, visible and vibrant: Henry--"unrivaled arborist, a ruthless merchant, and a brilliant innovator"--a metaphor for the Industrial Revolution. Raised with Dutch discipline and immersed in intellectual salons, Alma--botany explorations paralleling 19th-century natural philosophers becoming true scientists--develops a "Theory of Competitive Alteration" in near concurrence with Darwin and Wallace. There's stoic Beatrix, wife and mother; saintly Prudence, Alma's adopted sister; devoted Hanneke de Groot, housekeeper and confidante; silent, forbidding Dick Yancey, Henry's ruthless factotum; and Ambrose Pike, mystical, half-crazed artist. Alma, tall, ungainly, "ginger of hair, florid of skin, small of mouth, wide of brow, abundant of nose," and yet thoroughly sensual, marries Ambrose, learning too late he intends marriage blanc, an unconsummated union. Multiple narrative threads weave seamlessly into a saga reminiscent of T. C. Boyle's Water Music, with Alma following Ambrose to Tahiti and then returning alone to prosper at Hortus Botanicus, thinking herself "the most fortunate woman who ever lived." A brilliant exercise of intellect and imagination.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.There are no comments on this title.