Gilbert’s story, having seemingly straggled in from one of Lewis Carroll’s. She has been strict, ill-humored and punishing in ways that ensure she will not be missed.Ī third young woman also enters Ms. It is no spoiler, given the book’s more than 80-year span, to say that Beatrix dies in the course of the story. When Beatrix gives the two girls their nightly scoldings, as is her habit, she blames Alma for showing off too much knowledge, Prudence for not being clever enough. In her late teens, Alma suddenly finds herself with an adopted sister, Prudence, who happens to be as beautiful as Alma is plain. So few important incidents shape “The Signature of All Things” that its actual events seem shockingly abrupt.

Although almost nothing happens during Alma’s girlhood, every page teems with the glories of the natural world. Gilbert has her own burning enthusiasms, and they come through so clearly that they supplant the book’s narrative. Alma is a supremely happy autodidact during this voluptuously-written part of the book, which breathes surprising life into lists and descriptions. The little nymph grows up so idyllically on an estate near Philadelphia that she learns to tell time by charting the opening and closing of particular flowers. Alma commits her life to ceaseless study, but reading this vibrant, hot-blooded book about her takes no work at all.Īlma is the only daughter of Henry and his Dutch wife, Beatrix (“a living slab of ballast, which was precisely what he wanted”), after they emigrate to America, with tulip bulbs sewn into Beatrix’s clothing. “The Signature of All Things” is one of those rewardingly fact-packed books that make readers feel bold and smart by osmosis. But many other people will be drawn to Alma’s vigor, resilience and moxie and excited by her love of knowledge, not to mention her attunement to the erotica of the botanical world. Gilbert’s “Eat, Pray, Love.” Since she has no interest in fiction, she might sniff at “The Signature of All Things,” too. She would never have read the 19th-century equivalent of Ms.

“Smelling salts!” is what she meant to demand.Īlma knows nothing of heroines other than herself. When Alma’s mother faints, the daughter’s mind leaps from Latin (“bring me sal volatile”) to chemistry (“ammonium carbonate”) to archaic chemistry (“spirit of hartshorn”) to Pliny the Elder (“hammoniacus sal”) before she can make herself clear to the plebeians on her staff. Calculus puts her into “fits of ecstasies.” She reads in many languages, the older the better, even if this knowledge can be a hindrance. She knows every species of plant on her father’s vast estate. Alma Whittaker, the large, spinsterly botanist who carries Elizabeth Gilbert’s new book, “The Signature of All Things,” on her strong shoulders, is a born scholar.

The signature of all things gilbert