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The Signature of All Things: A Novel, by Elizabeth Gilbert
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A glorious, sweeping novel of desire, ambition, and the thirst for knowledge, from the # 1 New York Times bestselling author of Eat, Pray, Love and Committed
Look out for Elizabeth Gilbert’s new book, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear, on sale now!
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.
- Sales Rank: #7250 in Books
- Published on: 2014-06-24
- Released on: 2014-06-24
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.41" h x 1.09" w x 5.43" l, 1.04 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 528 pages
Amazon.com Review
An Amazon Best Book of the Month, October 2013: As a small girl, Elizabeth Gilbert scrawled her name in the most extraordinary book in her house: an original illustrated folio of Captain Cook’s voyages. Decades later, her parents discovered her signature and gave her the book, reigniting her passion for scientific exploration in the century leading up to Darwin’s theory of evolution. She became fascinated with the women—always wives or daughters of scientists—who made their own discoveries, in spite of the cultural constraints that kept them from true exploration. Her invented heroine, the insatiably curious Alma Whittaker, daughter of a scrappy botanical baron, spends most of her life confined to her family estate in Philadelphia, yearning for a life of greater passion and liberty. She channels her desires into botany, thrilling to the miniature universe of moss in the forests surrounding her house, developing a new taxonomy that becomes a theory encompassing all living things, parallel to Darwin’s. When she finally turns herself loose on the world, it’s to claim her place in a lineage of explorers. An earthy, elegant, deeply sensual novel of daring breadth and imagination, The Signature of All Things gives us the cosmos in the life of one woman, in her worlds within worlds. –Mari Malcolm
From Booklist
*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. --Joanne Wilkinson
Review
Praise for "The Signature of All Things"
"Unlike anything Gilbert has ever written. The book's heroine is Alma Whittaker, the brilliant, restless daughter of an imperious botanical explorer. Its prose has the elegant sheen of a 19th-century epic, but its concerns--the intersection of science and faith, the feminine struggle for fulfillment, the dubious rise of the pharmaceutical industry--are essentially modern...Gilbert has returned to her roots in fiction and written the sort of rip-roaring tale that would have been considered entertainment for the masses 150 years ago." --"The New York Times Magazine"
"The most ambitious and purely imaginative work in Gilbert's 20-year career: a deeply researched and vividly rendered historical novel about a 19th century female botanist." --"The Wall Street Journal"
"Gilbert has mulled, from the confines of her desk, the correlations of nature, the principle that connects a grain of sand to a galaxy, to create a character who does the same - who makes the study of existence her life's purpose. And in doing so, she has written the novel of a lifetime." -- "O, The Oprah Magazine"
"Gilbert's sweeping saga of Henry Whittaker and his daughter Alma offers an allegory for the great, rampant heart of the 19th century...Characters leap into life, visible and vibrant... A brilliant exercise of intellect and imagination."--"Kirkus Reviews"
"Gilbert has returned to fiction, and clearly she's reveling in all its pleasures and possibilities...[an] unhurried, sympathetic, intelligent novel by an author confident in her material and her form."--"Publishers Weekly"
"Rich, highly satisfying...Gilbert, in supreme command of her material, effortlessly invokes the questing spirit of the nineteenth century...Beautifully written and imbued with a reverence for science and learning, this is a must-read."--"ALA"" Booklist"
Praise for "The Signature of All Things"
"Gilbert has established herself as a straight-up storyteller who dares us into adventures of worldly discovery, and this novel stands as a winning next act. "The""Signature of All Things" is a bracing homage to the many natures of genius and the inevitable progress of ideas, in a world that reveals its best truths to the uncommonly patient minds." --Barbara Kingsolver, "The New York Times Book Review"
"Unlike anything Gilbert has ever written. The book's heroine is Alma Whittaker, the brilliant, restless daughter of an imperious botanical explorer. Its prose has the elegant sheen of a 19th-century epic, but its concerns--the intersection of science and faith, the feminine struggle for fulfillment, the dubious rise of the pharmaceutical industry--are essentially modern...Gilbert has returned to her roots in fiction and written the sort of rip-roaring tale that would have been considered entertainment for the masses 150 years ago." --"The New York Times Magazine"
"The most ambitious and purely imaginative work in Gilbert's 20-year career: a deeply researched and vividly rendered historical novel about a 19th century female botanist." --"The Wall Street Journal"
"Gilbert has mulled, from the confines of her desk, the correlations of nature, the principle that connects a grain of sand to a galaxy, to create a character who does the same - who makes the study of existence her life's purpose. And in doing so, she has written the novel of a lifetime." -- "O, The Oprah Magazine"
"Gilbert's sweeping saga of Henry Whittaker and his daughter Alma offers an allegory for the great, rampant heart of the 19th century...Characters leap into life, visible and vibrant... A brilliant exercise of intellect and imagination."--"Kirkus Reviews"
"Gilbert has returned to fiction, and clearly she's reveling in all its pleasures and possibilities...[an] unhurried, sympathetic, intelligent novel by
Most helpful customer reviews
314 of 333 people found the following review helpful.
3.5 stars
By E. Smiley
When I see a book about a female botanist in the nineteenth century, I expect one of two storylines: either "woman fights sexism to pursue her dreams" or "unconventional woman finds fulfillment in romance"--or both. This book flirts with both narratives but settles down with neither, and is better for it.
The Signature of All Things is a big, ambitious book, beginning with the world-spanning exploits of one Henry Whittaker, thief turned botanist, in the late 1700s, before moving on to his daughter Alma about 50 pages in. Alma grows up fantastically wealthy and encouraged to follow scientific pursuits, falls in love with a local publisher, and you think you know where this is going.... but then, well, it doesn't go that way, and a third of the way through the book she's 48 years old, and then the real story begins.
One of the difficulties with this novel is that there's no real driving plot--or rather, Alma's life is the plot, though there are some significant time-skips--but it consistently defied my expectations and kept my interest. It's a book about the Enlightenment, with a lot of research and discovery and expanding of horizons, and I came away impressed with Gilbert's respect for science. Alma is someone whose intellectual life is as important to her (perhaps more so) than her emotional life, and most authors would have a hard time writing about that sort of character in a positive and believable way--which makes sense; writing a good novel almost always requires an author to be intensely interested in feelings. But Gilbert balances the science and emotion well, and even has me looking at mosses (Alma's specialty) with new eyes. Her writing style itself draws the reader in, energetic and engaging and far more polished than I expected from someone best known for a mega-bestselling mid-life-crisis memoir (judge me all you like for that).
But too often in this 499-page book I felt Gilbert was perhaps getting carried away with her writing. Whole sections go on far longer than necessary (the Tahiti episode, for instance); at least 50 pages could have been cut without harming the story. Worse, the book feels weighted more toward narrative summary than scenes, which means we're being told a lot about the characters and their activities rather than being in the story with them watching events unfold. I've noticed this problem in a number of recent novels, and I don't know whether it originates with authorial lack of confidence or just the desire to cram in everything about a character's life, but it results in a less engaging and memorable story. When Gilbert gets into the scenes, it's excellent: the solar system dance tells us more about Alma's childhood than all the summary preceding it, and lingers far longer in the reader's mind besides.
The biggest problem with all the summarizing is that it distances the reader from the characters. Alma is well-developed and believable, and I enjoyed her story, but my investment came more from curiosity to know what would happen next than any emotional connection to her (and for all the science, this is still a novel, so emotional connections are to be desired). The secondary characters are colorful and often intriguing, but suffer from being described more than shown. Prudence, in particular, is potentially fascinating but gets too little page time, leaving her relationship with Alma not quite believable (they grow up together from the age of 10, without access to other children, and maintain a polite distance the entire time?). Ambrose works because we see his relationship with Alma develop as she experiences it. Retta is bizarre--in fact, all Gilbert's women have extreme personalities of one sort or another, and by the time Retta was introduced my suspension of disbelief was breaking. Henry is a mess of contradictions not really explained by the 50 pages spent on his backstory, though beginning with his adventures rather than Alma's childhood was an astute choice. For the most part I believed in these people, but by zooming out too often Gilbert kept me from truly knowing them.
Overall, then, I found this a worthy novel but not a great one, though it has great potential that a firmer editor might have captured. Not having read Gilbert before, I found it a pleasant surprise and an enjoyable read, and admire its bold choices. I just wish it had been a bit more focused.
446 of 479 people found the following review helpful.
A rich and right experience.
By Candace Siegle, Greedy Reader
This was my first time reading Elizabeth Gilbert--I'm one of the six people in the universe who didn't read "Eat, Pray, Love"--and I'm glad I didn't approach this novel with any preconceived ideas. I'm sure it's nothing like her previous bestseller, but if that book can propel this book high on the lists that would be great. "The Signature of All Things" is a lovely novel, beautifully written with great scope and rich characters.
The novel is full of small delights of writing. Money, Gilbert writes, follows Alma's father around "like a small, excited dog." The nineteenth century enchantment with science and the natural world is expressed fully and with the sense of wonder Alma and her family felt. Alma is educated in the 19th century way by her autodidact botanist father Henry and her classically educated Dutch mother, who want her to be able to understand the world on many levels. She does, and she doesn't.
Where the novel falters is in the secondary characters, notably Alma's adopted sister Prudence and their friend, Retta. Both characters are meant to offer contrasts to Alma's cerebral, carnal aspects, but as people they are not believable, nor are their marriages. The novel becomes a little unmoored--as does Alma--once she leaves White Acres for the greater world. These are strange false steps in an otherwise assured work.
But you know what? Who cares! It might take a little suspension of disbelief in the last third or so of "The Signature of all Things" but each page is still a pleasure and otherwise it might just be too perfect. May this quality novel have the success of Elizabeth Gilbert's other books. It would be nice to see it at the top of the NYT bestseller list.
253 of 282 people found the following review helpful.
Well Done Ms. Gilbert!
By tea
Let me start by saying that I have indeed read "Eat, Pray, Love". Yep, that's the camp I belong to. Also, I totally loved it. Yep, that's the sub-camp I belong to.
Though I am not much into fiction, I was mildly curious to find out how Ms. Gilbert would walk out of memoir mode and segway into the world of fiction (not sure if this is her first fiction but it's the only one I have picked up).
Would she be able to enrapture, intrigue and delight us with a tale borne out of her imagination, as she had with her own true story in "Eat, Pray and Love"?
Well, the answer is a resounding yes!
And by golly, does she have a tale to tell.
Set in the 18th -19th century, the story revolves around Alma, the daughter of the very wealthy Henry Whittaker. From her father, Alma has inherited a penchant for plants. She spends most of her waking hours trying to make sense of the botanical world around her, perhaps in an attempt to understand her own existence. But through the course of her life, she is made to realize how little she knows about her own world, her own self.
The story has been skillfully woven into a rich tapestry of adventure, emotions and science. Something also needs to be said about the amount of research that must have gone in; the book is peppered with facts that have been laid out in a manner almost poetic.
"Alma learned to tell time by the opening and closing of flowers. At five o'clock in the morning, she noticed, the goatsbeard petals always unfolded. At six o'clock, the daisies and globeflowers opened. When the clock struck seven, the dandelions would bloom. At eight o'clock, it was the scarlet pimpernel's turn...."
Facts infused with poetry or perhaps poetry infused with facts? Either way, you will be charmed!
"The Signature of All Things" is right up there with "Eat, Pray, Love".But the fact that the book has been written by the Italian food eating, spirituality seeking, meditating, globetrotting Ms. Gilbert, you know the persona that I (we?) have come to associate with the author, has taken a backseat.
As it should have.
Now that's versatility!
Highly recommended.
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