It's the kind of book you pick up time and again over the years, says Reena Amos Dyes
Elizabeth Gilbert’s novel, The Signature of All Things, is a classic. It’s the kind of book you pick up time and again over the years. Her style of writing is comparable to old masters like Thomas Hardy, Emily Brontë, Charles Dickens and like the old masters she has the ability to grip your attention no matter how simple the plot. She has the unique gift of making you “see” the events unfold through her strong descriptive prose, and empathise with the protagonist by making her so real, flawed and vulnerable.
The book is an epic tale of 18th and 19th century botanical exploration, scientific discoveries and theories, the Age of Enlightenment as it were. Gilbert takes the reader on a journey through that period of human history when all old religious beliefs and scientific assumptions were being challenged, re-discovered and were making way for bold new theories, ideas and discoveries. As the author so aptly puts it: “It used to be that God was revealed in the wonders of nature; now God was being challenged by those same wonders. Scholars were now required to choose one side or the other.” This change in history is recorded through the life of the main protagonist Alma Whittaker.
Alma is, the plain, amazingly intelligent, curious little “plum” who seems destined for success and who rules the “kingdom” of White Acre, her father’s huge estate in Philadelphia.
The book relates the fortunes of the Whittaker family, headed by the ambitious, tenacious, intelligent Henry Whittaker, who though born in a poor English family is not cowed by the circumstances of his lowly birth and is not lacking in spirit and enterprise.
Henry learns everything there is to earn about plants from his father who is the most trusted caretaker of Kew, the royal English botanical gardens. On being caught running an illegal trade in Kew’s precious botanical purchases Henry is turned in by his own father and is sent on a botanical quest for Kew itself with the famous Captain Cook. Eventually, Henry makes a great fortune in the South American quinine trade and becomes the richest man in Philadelphia.
Born in 1800, Alma, who inherits her father’s money and her mother’s brilliant, questioning mind, ultimately becomes a botanist herself. However, Alma also yearns for love and companionship. Once in despair the young Alma asks her loyal housekeeper, who gives her the affection that her stoic mother certainly does not: “Who will ever put a ring on these fishwife’s hands of mineIJ Who will ever kiss this encyclopaedia of a headIJ”
left alone by her mother’s death and her beautiful sister and best friend’s marriage Alma stares at a horrifyingly boring and empty existence until she stumbles upon the mysterious world of mosses and her “existence at once felt bigger and much, much smaller — but a pleasant sort of smaller. The world had scaled itself down into endless inches of possibility. Her life could be lived in generous miniature... She would probably die of old age before she understood even half of what was occurring in this one single boulder field. Well, huzzah to that! It meant that Alma had work stretched ahead of her for the rest of her life. She need not be idle. She need not be unhappy. Perhaps she need not even be lonely. She had a task.”
But life is not done with Alma as yet and love does come into Alma’s life in the guise of the handsome and frail botanical illustrator Ambrose Pike, who is years younger than Alma, who is well into her middle age by then. Alma listens with rapt attention when Ambrose tells her “The whole sphere of air that surrounds us, Alma, is alive with invisible attractions — electric, magnetic, fiery and thoughtful. There is a universal sympathy all around us... When we cease all argument and debate — both internal and external — our true questions can be heard and answered... That is the gathering of magic.”
Surprisingly, this brilliant, scientific, logical woman blessed with a sharp, questioning mind feels drawn to this idealistic visionary, this artist, whose illustrations of orchids are so perfect and beautiful that they move Alma to tears and she welcomes him into her home and then eventually into her life. Sadly for Alma nothing works out as she had planned and when it turns out that all Ambrose wants is a platonic relationship, an enraged Alma banishes him from her life to her father’s vanilla plantations in Tahiti.
Gilbert sums up Alma’s relationship with Ambrose in these words: “This person had arrived, he had illuminated her, he had ensorcelled her with notions of miracle and beauty, he had both understood and misunderstood her, he had married her, he had broken her heart, he had looked upon her with those sad and hopeless eyes, he had accepted his banishment, and now he was gone. What a stark and stunning thing was life — that such a cataclysm can enter and depart so quickly, and leave such wreckage behind!”
Alma busies herself in the care of her dying father and her beloved mosses till she gets news of Ambrose’s death in Tahiti. Alma is devastated and is wrecked with “a level of grief so deep that it stops resembling grief at all. The pain becomes so severe that the body can no longer feel it. The grief cauterizes itself, scars over, prevents inflated feeling. Such numbness is a kind of mercy.” Overcome by remorse, Alma sets off for Tahiti and this is where the rest of her life begins.
The Signature of All Things is an epic novel about the twin quest for knowledge and love that are inseparable from each other. The novel takes the reader on a journey through several continents, from london to Peru, Amsterdam, Philadelphia, Tahiti and important times in history. Alma herself was born in 1800, three weeks after the death of George Washington, and lives through Darwin’s theory of evolution. Gilbert’s knowledge of botany is staggering and it is very obvious that the author has done extensive research on the subject, which is truly impressive in its scope.
The Signature of all Things is a compelling tale of love, passion, ambition, discovery, yearning and grief and is a must-read for anyone who loves the classics.