This was a very long book - 600 + pages which at
times seemed to drag on endlessly, however whenever I was on the point of
abandoning it, an interesting bit would crop up and that would keep me going. I
must admit that I did do a lot of skimming as I found some of it pretty dreary
and boring.
Apparently, as a small girl, Elizabeth Gilbert the
author scrawled her name in an 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.
So, the book starts off with the story of Henry
Whittaker, who was born in 1760 into a very poor family. He was the youngest
child of a lowly gardener at Kew Gardens. Despite being nigh on illiterate he
became, a botanical explorer, import tycoon and the richest man in Philadelphia.
He wasn’t a likeable person and achieved this through a mixture of his
intelligence, his interest in trees and dishonesty.
His daughter Alma, born in 1800 is the main
character in the book. She is a strong character, intelligent and inquisitive,
rather plain and not dainty or feminine but raised in luxury which enabled her
to devote herself to scholarly pursuits with time for reading and research. This
led to her becoming an eminent botanist in her own right. Alma spends most of
her life in seclusion on the family estate, unmarried and alone.
Different characters are introduced to the story and
these lead to unexpected twists and turns, joys, heartbreak and soul searching
and self discovery for all concerned, culminating in Alma travelling to Tahiti
and then on to visit family in Holland.
The book is very informative, giving a background
history and loads of facts about the inception and development of Kew Gardens
and about its superintendent, Sir Joseph Banks who had been chief botanist for
Captain Cook’s HMS Endeavour. It gives an insight into 19th century travel and
life in various parts of the world- London, Peru, Philadelphia, Holland, Tahiti
and beyond. It is crammed with botanical facts and details and rather
monotonous, descriptive passages which I tended to skim over - I can’t say I’m
particularly enamoured by the taxonomy of mosses or the minutiae of countless
botanical species. There were also some weird rather distasteful sexual scenes
which I didn’t think were necessary, they certainly didn’t enhance the story or
add anything to the plot. So I am ambivalent about the book. It certainly
involved a huge amount of research by Elizabeth Gilbert, but in retrospect I
wish I hadn’t bothered to read it, it didn’t have a feel good factor for
me.
No comments:
Post a Comment