The Signature of All Things: A Novel

Surprisingly a most enjoyable and very interesting book. I was a skeptic going into the reading based on one book I had previously read by Gilbert. I was pleasantly shocked by the depth of her writing, research and complex thought processes in composing this particular story. The scientific, botanical, and spiritual concepts and research in the novel are impressive.The novel starts in 1760 with the birth of Henry Whittaker born outside London into poverty who as a young boy works his way up in life to become a wealthy world renowned horticulturalist. He marries a Dutch woman, Beatrix Van Devender and they move to Philadelphia with the governess Hanneke de Groot. Henry and Beatix have a child, Alma, and adopt an orphaned child, Prudence.Alma is a naturally curious, scientifically oriented and bright girl. Academics, science, horticulture and the study of nature are her true passions. Men are attracted to her for her mind but not her femininity, or possibly lack thereof, qualities. She becomes a renowned bryologist but her theory of competitive alteration, which closely mirrored Darwin's theory of natural selection, went unpublished.Alma married Ambrose Pike a gifted man who was a botanical illustrator. Ambrose was grappling the concept of earthbound science versus the design of all things by a supreme intelligence. He was attracted to Alma for her mind but not her body. Their marriage fails because Alma cannot reach the spiritual plateau that Ambrose is seeking. He goes to Tahiti and dies. Alma is distraught over his death and the demise of their marriage so she goes to Tahiti to discover the fate of Ambrose's death. There she meets a gentleman, Tomorrow Morning, who helps her understand more about Ambrose and the man they both loved.Alma was a woman alone in the world with her thoughts, sciences and the binding closet for her sole sexual expression. Men with great minds loved her for her intellect. As an elderly woman she made peace with these human facts. While she desired to be loved sensually as a woman, her greatest love and enjoyment in life came through her exploration and acquisition of knowledge and the testing of theories. She knew her mind was equal to one of the greatest men of her time, Charles Darwin.A truly lovely book. Gilbert takes the reader deep into the thoughts and psychology of Alma Whittaker. I was swept up in the journey of Henry from London, to Amsterdam, Philadelphia, Tahiti and Alma from Philadelohia, to Tahiti and Amsterdam. I learned much from this book and it made me think at a deep level. Well done Ms. Gilbert!“the signature of all things”— namely, that God had hidden clues for humanity’s betterment inside the design of every flower, leaf, fruit, and tree on earth. All the natural world was a divine code, Boehme claimed, containing proof of our Creator’s love. This is why so many medicinal plants resembled the diseases they were meant to cure, or the organs they were able to treat. Basil, with its liver- shaped leaves, is the obvious ministration for ailments of the liver. The celandine herb, which produces a yellow sap, can be used to treat the yellow discoloration brought on by jaundice. Walnuts, shaped like brains, are helpful for headaches. Coltsfoot, which grows near cold streams, can cure the coughs and chills brought on by immersion in ice water. Polygonum , with its spattering of blood- red markings on the leaves, cures bleeding wounds of the flesh. And so on, ad infinitum.""She thought again about the four distinct and concurrent varieties of time, as she had once named them: Divine Time, Geological Time, Human Time, Moss Time.""In fact, the Tahitians say that all the useful plants on this island resemble parts of the human body, as a message from the gods, you see. This is why coconut oil, which is helpful for headaches, comes from the coconut, which looks like a head. Mape chestnuts are said to be good for kidney ailments, for they resemble kidneys themselves, or so I am told. The bright red sap of the fei plant is meant to be useful for blood ailments.” “The signature of all things,” Alma murmured."“I will tell you why we have these extraordinary minds and souls, Miss Whittaker,” he continued, as though he had not heard her. “We have them because there is a supreme intelligence in the universe, which wishes for communion with us. This supreme intelligence longs to be known. It calls out to us. It draws us close to its mystery, and it grants us these remarkable minds, in order that we try to reach for it. It wants us to find it. It wants union with us, more than anything.”"We are fiddle, fork, and spoon, We are dancing with the moon, If you’d like to steal a kiss from us, You’d better steal one soon!"

This is an in-depth and meticulously written chronicle of one woman's life--a scientist, a botanist, in the 1800s. It is a well-researched look into the world of botanical trade, botanical pharmaceuticals and the life, loves, struggles and work of one woman. While interesting, it often gets mired down in botanical minutia.

With all the flotsam and jetsam that floats by each day, it is heartening to read a book that engages, entertains and edifies one's view on life, all at the same time. Such is "The Signature of All Things" by Elizabeth Gilbert. As you might recall, she became famous for her memoir, "Eat, Pray, Love" which sold 10 million copies, was made into a movie starring Julia Roberts and which has made her rich enough to begin rebuilding (including buying houses for friends) a small town in New Jersey where she lives with a husband whom she married to ensure he could stay in the U.S.A. on a green card. You might think that would be enough to handle in the past few years, along with setting up a shop of imported wares like Buddhas and other Asian things that her husband manages.But no, apparently, that's not been enough to occupy her time/life. With the publication of "The Signature of All Things," Elizabeth Gilbert reveals that she has been busy researching 18th and 19th century botanical history, including the commerce of ocean trade between the West and obscure locations yielding up medicinal plants and potions that ebbed and flowed with plagues, fevers, malaria and other illnesses that could not be treated otherwise than with exotic potions and herbs. She has constructed a tale (that's the only word for it) of a family, and especially a heroine named Alma Whittaker who is not pretty but is very intelligent, feisty and hard-working who perseveres through a life of disappointments and wishes that go unfulfilled in unwinsome ways. That this story is told in a narrative fashion ("telling" rather than "showing" through dialogue) is a huge relief because stories matter and I'm so glad to be able to simply read for pleasure without having to deal with all the annoying current artificial fads in writing/publishing.That being said, another bonus in the writing is that for me, at least, the narrator's voice sounds awfully familiar to that of Jane Austen. In fact, I enjoyed reading this book much more than some Jane Austen's novels because the humor and wit come easy, comes often and is awe-inspiring in its light touch. So, it even kind of out-Austens Jane, but seems so effortless that it's not a contest, just fun.To be honest, I read a lot and am one of those readers who, unless engaged and interested, do not suffer books (or fools) gladly. This is the first book in a long time that I marveled at while laughing out loud. I also appreciated the more sobering discussions about the relationships of all things, (never mind the signature as explained in the novel,) and the spirited attitude of the heroine. I can't wait to read it again, more slowly this time, and savor the writing of someone who has already won the writing lottery with "Eat, Pray, Love," a book that I wanted to throw across the room numerous times except for the "Pray" section. Now, against some odds, she has succeeded in writing literature. No wonder Elizabeth Gilbert is smiling in the photos that accompany the book. She's done what many of us want to accomplish in our lives: to be original in our creativity, to persevere until it is finished and to be published. I wish I had come up with something like this. But it's more than enough pleasure for me just to hold this volume in my hands and to know I can read it more than once and enjoy it more fully after an astonishing first time through. What a gift!

I think I am the only person on the planet who did not like Eat, Love, Pray. In fact, not only did I not like it, I actually kind of hated it. Therefore, when a member of our reading group suggested we read The Signature of All Things by the same author, I resisted the suggestion with all my might and charm. Alas, I lost the battle (my charm ain't what it used to be).This is why I was surprised down to my socks when I gobbled the first 300 pages of this book down like a giant bucket of popcorn at the movies. I couldn't believe this book had been penned by the same author as Eat, Love, Pray. The writing was robust, the characters were compelling, the storyline riveting and most of all, there was a historical and educational richness that made you feel like you were getting smarter and smarter with every page you turned. In this way, Gilbert's novel reminded me of the historical fiction by authors James Michener and Leon Uris. I had even started imagining my critique to my reading group that would include such accolades as "one of my favorite books of all time."Not so fast. Around page 300 I hit the skids with this book and hit them big. The reading went from sailing through chapter after chapter with the wind at my back on a sea of glass, to slogging my way through each page as if I were hip deep in a muddy bog with three bags of groceries in my arms. My sense is that Gilbert ran out of steam. In some ways, the story deflated slowly, as with the fortunes and foibles of some of the main characters, but mostly, there was a sudden shift in tone, storyline, and even the style of writing. I swear it seemed like a different person took over the writing of the last 200 pages. The longer that this workman-like writing and irksome plot continued, the angrier I got that the author had taken me to the celestial heights of reading pleasure, only to drop me to the dark depths of reading despair. Okay, that was a little dramatic, but you get my point. I wish Ms. Gilbert's editors had applied as firm a hand to the end of the book, as they did at the beginning.Now, once and for all, I am done with Elizabeth Gilbert (unless, of course, she shows up on my doorstep and politely asks me to read her next book and then I certainly will.) :-)Final note: almost everyone else in my reading group felt the same way I did. There were a couple of people who didn't like the book from the start, but for those who did, their feelings had changed drastically by the end.

I read the sample of Elizabeth Gilbert's The Signature of All Things and was immediately hooked. Henry's coming-of-age story, and Alma's childhood reminded me of something from Charles Dickens, a literary classic. Honestly, I could not get enough of the botany - who knew plants were so fascinating?!?! It was exciting to feel like I was learning while loving these characters.The book shifted midway when Mrs. Gilbert follows Alma, Prudence, and their bestie, through their adulthood and into middle age, but I still loved it, however I missed the beginning. Then the book shifts again when Alma is older - don't want to give plot points away, but it becomes more of a struggle between science and metaphysical. Interesting, but kind of random, but then kind of meticulous in how it all ties together. Interesting is the word I will use to describe it and leave it at that with no other judgment.I applaud Mrs. Gilbert for taking a risk. Her writing is beautiful and I found myself re-reading paragraphs because they were like poems. Her description is unparalleled with anything else I've read lately, and I found myself lost in her story and characters more than once, with them haunting me when I wasn't reading. I literally feel like I've travelled the world through her book and I'm grateful.I must admit I was not a fan of Eat, Pray, Love, to give anyone reading this review a gauge on my reading preferences. I can say, that I completely enjoyed this book and was sad for it to end - and it's LONG. Read with an open mind.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I debated between a 4 and a 5 star rating. I am in the "hated Eat, Pray, Love camp" but loved this book. If one is looking for a plot driven novel this is not it. In fact, many maxims of good writing are violated. The main character does not have a singular goal whose journey is the novel. Ms. Gilbert often tells rather than shows, but tells so effectively with a laundry list to support her claim that you get the picture. She frequently says the same thing in three consecutive sentences, but in different ways. The effect is a wonderful hammering home of her point.It did take two chapters for me to get into the novel, and I was half way through before i really cared about Alma although I understood herearlier. Of course, much of the first half is about Alma's bulldozer father followed by Alma's childhood. Alma has a fine mind and so does the author. You appreciate Alma's love of botany, even her narrow specialty which is a tribute to all of the research which went into the novel. Alma deals with deep questions about the nature of life, her own place in the world, her sexuality, and her own nature. I liked the fact that Ms. Gilbert dared to make her heroine a large, unattractive woman.I found all of the characters vividly drawn and believable except for Prudence, and then only for a single act attributed to her late in the novel. Alma herself did not understand Prudence so it may be logical for the author to write so the reader has the same reaction. What I did not believe was Prudence's odd sacrifice and the housekeeper's keeping it from Alma until her father's death. The reader was given no hint the Prudence the housekeeper later describes. All of Prudence's actions and dialogue displayed only polite indifference to Alma.As a retired mathematician/academic I can attest that Ms. Gilbert accurately described the scientific publishing world. The question of how evolution accounts for altruism was a great, provoking question for Alma to grapple with. And yes, Alma made a mistake in not publishing her best work because she had not settled the question to her satisfaction.This is a book you can sink your teeth into.

This book caught me from the beginning. Based on history, it is funny, interesting, a great story. It talks about plants, people and an ugly dog. It brings back Elizabeth Britton, Ambrose Pike and maybe even Wallace. I loved it. THANK YOU Elizabeth Gilbert for this gift.

As I came to the end of this nearly 500 page epic, I did not want to leave the world of the main character, Alma Whittaker, so deeply was I touched by her. A towering woman of six feet, big-boned, with frizzy red hair and her father's large nose, Alma Whittaker is also a towering spirit. Elizabeth Gilbert has rendered her as beautifully in prose as the exquisite and faithfully detailed drawings of orchids which another character, Ambrose Pike creates - works of art unmatched by any other artist of his day. Alma is an admixture of scholarship and guilelessness, determination and self-discipline, great kindness and humility. This novel made me laugh and cry, sometimes within the bounds of a single page. Moments of irony and absurdity are sprinkled throughout. For example, the Tahitian Sister Manu's sermons in the mission church put a decidedly South Seas spin on the "call/response" religious services of Christian evangelicals.Navigation is a recurrent theme in the novel, from her father's early days as a seaman on Captain Cook's voyages of discovery, to the Tahitian's ancient knowledge of sailing by wind and star, to Alma's own journeys circumnavigating the oceans in later life. On inner levels as well, she seems on a constant quest to find her bearings, to chart her course through the shoals and eddies of circumstance and find the True North of her life. An expert in bryology, the study of moss, her own life can be examined and catalogued equally dispassionately from many diverse angles. A privileged heiress… A scientist… A solitary figure within a narrow, circumscribed life. She is alternately oblivious and brilliant. Wise and foolish. At one point, she even fears that a prominent scientific colleague might think her to be "…(s)ome unhinged old bat with an unseemly fixation." At times, Alma is as unaware of the feelings of the people around her as she is unusually prescient to the moss and all other varieties of plant life on her father's estate. For most of her life, she is unaware of just how much she is actually loved by others.From childhood, we see her adopted sister Prudence through Alma's eyes. Prudence is beautiful, while Alma is big, ungainly and unattractive. It's an early indication of Alma's character that she is only able to feel the pain in the contrast between the two of them, and feel diminished by it in a way she'd never known before. Jealousy is totally absent from her psychological make-up. But besides being a great beauty, Prudence is also remote and inscrutable. She seems frustratingly withholding and incapable of any expression of sisterly affection. Only when they are older, does Alma learn of the true depth of Prudence's love and loyalty.With her scientifically trained mind, Alma feels compelled to tease out the truth of things, whether that be colonies of moss on a boulder on her father's vast estate, or the truth of her romantic involvement with Ambrose Pike, the aforementioned painter of orchids. In mid-life, she embarks on a journey to the South Seas, driven by a need to uncover the truth of their time together. Did he think of her at all while he was in Tahiti? Had he ever loved her? Just who was he? She must know. Her time in Tahiti seemed to go on a little too long (I agree with some readers who thought some judicious editing could have been used here). I grew a bit impatient. The whole purpose of the trip seemed unnecessary, as obviously he had moved on with his life. For a woman so engaged in a life of the mind, she seemed to be languishing in the small mission community on the beach. Only later on, did I come to realize that she had to go to Tahiti. Only by being there could Alma put her relationship with Ambrose in its proper perspective, and discover the true depth of it's meaning.I loved the dialogue. Especially moving were two brief conversations she has with virtual strangers, individuals she did not know personally, but who figured prominently in her life. As she says to one of them, "You and I are - I believe - more closely affixed to each other's destinies than one might think." In a delicate economy of words, in both life-altering conversations Alma found the validations she needed to enable her to move on, while forging a lifelong bond and attunement with the other, though it was unlikely their paths would ever cross again.The Theory of Evolution, just then being popularized in the science of the day, is also a recurring theme in the book. The adaptation of an organism to its environmental niche in human cultural and religious terms is captured in a secondary character, The Reverend Welles. Sent to Tahiti decades earlier by a British Missionary Society, his efforts toward converting the natives have mutated into a syncretic amalgam more in keeping with the Tahitians own traditions and mindset. A metaphysical thread runs throughout the novel, forming subtle lines of convergence with the then revolutionary concept of physical evolution. The title comes from the mystical teachings of an obscure Sixteenth Century German mystic, Jacob Boeme. Boeme believed that there is a Divine imprimatur within all life forms, a unique signature that captures the quintessential essence of that being. It can be revealed if one looks for it. It is the signature of all things.Ambrose Pike is a believer in Boehm's teachings, and sees in Alma a kindred spirit. Evolution to him ultimately involves the unfolding of spirit - as much as it does changes in physical form. He believes there is an inborn yearning in us to ascend ever and ever closer to the Divine, and eventually leave the physical behind. This reminded me of the writings of the great French Anthropologist/Visionary and Jesuit Priest, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Chardin also believed the ultimate drive behind evolution was to eventually evolve us into "Human squared", a state wherein we would more fully express our spiritual essence. As a scientist, and because of her love of Earthly creation, Alma sees no need to posit another realm beyond the known. She is also a flesh and blood creature of physical passions, which she cannot forsake in favor of a more ephemeral existence.A lot of historical research went into this book. A contemporary of Charles Darwin, Alfred Russel Wallace, is also woven into the narrative. Although he is depicted as having come up with a simultaneous, though less developed concept of the Theory of Evolution than Darwin's, there is some difference of opinion as to the historical truth of this assertion. The biologist Bruce Lipton for example, in his book Spontaneous Evolution, asserts that Darwin, who Wallace somewhat naively sent his thesis to for an opinion, outright stole the idea. Although he'd amassed a great deal of naturalist data from his travels on The Beagle, for years Darwin floundered, unpublished, unable to fit his wealth of observational data within a unifying theoretical framework. In any case, Alfred Russel Wallace did, in real life, also have an interest in metaphysical matters, which he discusses with Alma. This was an age that was also seeing a flowering of metaphysical groups and ideas such as The Transcendentalist Movement, which was gaining popularity at the time, even among some great literary figures of the day and those in the sciences.Alma's thoughts at the end of the novel are a perfect melding of both her scientific training, and her openness to Earthly creation - both plant and human. It's been said that some film roles could only have been played by one particular actor of that era, and no other. The authenticity and naturalness of Alma's last act in the novel could only have been carried out by someone with her unique sensibilities. Through it she gives full, unself-conscious expression to the Divine imprimatur within her. To her signature. By it, she becomes most fully and authentically herself. I closed the covers of this epic novel with sadness that it was over, but inspired to be a better person. To be more like Alma Whittaker. I still miss her greatly..

I couldn't put this down. I read Eat Love Pray and liked it, then hated the movie, and it made me a little skittish about Elizabeth Gilbert, though I am not sure how involved she was with the movie. I took a leap of faith and bought The Signature of All Things and am ready to start rereading it. She writes so well about our relationship to the natural world, the power of a curious mind, the benefits and challenges of aging and loving and pursuing knowledge of the sake of learning. There were a couple times it made me catch my breathe.

A escritora teve a excelente ideia de trabalhar, além de vários romances simultâneos, o momento em que as luzes do Ocidente começaram a desvendar e estudar as descobertas que o ciclo das navegações trouxera. Muito além do milho e das batatas as descobertas sugeriram novas e mais provocativas considerações. Tudo com o uso de vocabulário denso e agradável. Lidas as primeiras 50 paginas, não há como interromper a leitura.

One of my favorite books. Absolute love!

نسخة أصلية من الكتاب 👍

Gilbert the incredible storyteller strikes again!