This book by Elizabeth Gilbert was my first ever read of the
author who had written ‘Eat, Pray, Love’. Obviously, I was under the impression
that it might be a self-help book and was a little worried, when I first opened
it. ‘The Signature of All Things’ took me by surprise.
Coincidentally, a) 5th
of January was the day I started the book, (yesterday) and also b) my father’s
birthday, and it was c) the birthday of the heroine of the book, Alma Whittaker.
Too many coincidences, perhaps but it had my attention, alright.
The book began with how Alma was born, before slipping into
the history of her father, Henry Whittaker. Henry was born in England, where
his father was a poor orchardman at a pleasure garden. His career started early,
first as a thief and then as a man of botany and a sailor, which takes him
across the seas, before landing back in England.
He moves to his final destination in Philadelphia, where he
sets himself up as a very rich man, a ‘newly minted sultan’. He takes up a wife,
Beatrix Whittaker, who runs away with him, from Holland. The wife brings him
Alma.
Alma is no ordinary girl, but where she lacks in prettiness,
she more than makes up in
After her mother’s death, she comes face to face with the
travails of growing up. She is forced to take care of her mother’s duties, and
watches as her friend and sister get married.
As Alma’s life unfolds, her loneliness is coupled with her
sexual desires, and her meeting with Ambrose Pike, a lithographer with mystical and spiritual ideas. Her marriage to him, the eventual breakdown of
it, and her travels around Tahiti and Amsterdam, form the rest of this story.
What makes it fascinating is not just her family, but the
conversations with the wonderful characters, the abolitionists, the
astronomers, missionaries and even the sea captains.
I liked it, but then in the middle it probably becomes a bit
of a drag. Alma’s tryst with botany actually lured me into the book (Almost had
me want to start studying it again) along with her father’s adventures and then
her own adventures at sea. Her married life and her encounters with the
missionary are the bits of drag in this really long book.
Alma is never confined by her femaleness and her big bones. She
sets forth in spite of her disappointments with love, into this world with uplifting
conversations and encounters with science and evolution. (You might be interested
in her theories around Charles Darwin)
The book takes on the form of a voyage. Full of ups and
downs. It started off wonderfully when it set sail, and then it lapsed into
storms before resurfacing at the calmness of the sea.
Author: Elizabeth Gilbert
Design: Alison Forner
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Bloomsbury
ISBN :
978-1-4088-5391-7
Price: Rs 599
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