The Signature of All Things

It's very rare that I get choked up at the end of a book, and even more rare that I get choked up for any reason other than a dog dying. But Gilbert managed to drum up that pregnant feeling in the back of my throat - the feeling that I had unveiled something truly beautiful.

I'll admit, I was skeptical that Gilbert would excel as a fiction writer in the same way she does in her memoirs/non-fiction (this is the first piece of fiction I have read of hers). However, she seamlessly adopts the voice of a 19th-century narrator with such deft, I would never have known this was not indeed written during that century.

Following the heritage and life of Alma Whittaker, a spinsterish, wealthy botanist (and manager of her curmudgeon-y father's estate) living in Philadelphia in the early-mid 1800's. Though a true scientist through and through (no frills, only logic), Gilbert lends a certain sensibility to Alma's consciousness that lights up a true fascination and passion for nature wherever she finds is, be that the grandest of the Tahitian mountains, or the smallest patch of moss; each contains a world of wonder unto themselves. She's an unlikely heroine, especially as she is often cold and unlikeable... yet, though she is plagued with despairing human disappointments and sadnesses, she strives on, sturdy and unrelenting, finding peace in nature, faith in the world just as it is - “You see, I have never felt the need to invent a world beyond this world, for this world has always seemed large and beautiful enough for me. I have wondered why it is not large and beautiful enough for others...We are all different, I suppose. All I ever wanted to know was this world.”

I cannot recommend this book enough, especially for lovers of science, nature, and historical fiction (the latter which, I admit, I generally don't really like). The writing is truly beautiful, and I promise you won't be disappointed.

It started out okay, and it hits one of my sweet spots after all, by being the life-story of a scientifically-minded 19th-century woman obsessed with botany, but then I first grew tired of Gilbert's over-florid over-cheeky unnecessarily-long prose, that stretched my patience very thin occasionally, and then I also started to dislike the heroine more and more. Her ignorance, her obsessions and fixations just grew boring. And in the end the narrative also forced her into being another Alfred Russel Wallace. I just eyerolled along at her stubborn insistence to not publish, just in time for Darwin to publish his, of course. As always, I mainly finished this at all, because I did the audiobook.

Well-written book about an unusual woman; frustrating at parts, slow in some parts, but worth the read all the same. Loved some of the insights, which correspond to some issues I've been thinking about often lately – God speaking to us through nature, a yearning inside us to be significant and a willingness and desire of God to be in relationship with us.