The Signature of All Things (High/Low) - Hardcover

Gilbert, Elizabeth

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1408841894 ISBN 13: 9781408841891

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2013

Synopsis

5 January 1800.

At the beginning of a new century, Alma Whittaker is born into a perfect Philadelphia winter. Her father, Henry Whittaker, is a bold and charismatic botanical explorer whose vast fortune belies his lowly beginnings as a vagrant in Sir Joseph Banks's Kew Gardens and as a deck hand on Captain Cook's HMS Resolution. Alma's mother, a strict woman from an esteemed Dutch family, has a knowledge of botany equal to any man's.

It is not long before Alma, an independent girl with a thirst for knowledge, comes into her own within the world of plants and science. But as her careful studies of moss take her deeper into the mysteries of evolution, the man she comes to love draws her in the opposite direction.

The Signature of All Things is a big novel, about a big century. It soars across the globe from London, to Peru, to Philadelphia, to Tahiti, to Amsterdam. Peopled with extraordinary characters - missionaries, abolitionists, adventurers, astronomers, sea captains, geniuses and the quite mad -above all it has an unforgettable heroine in Alma Whittaker, a woman of the Enlightened Age who stands defiantly on the cusp of the modern.

About this title

Review:

Unlike anything else she has ever written ... Its prose has the elegant sheen of a 19th-century epic, but its concerns - the intersection of science and faith, the feminine struggle for fulfilment - are especially modern (Steve Almond International Herald Tribune)

The story of Alma Whittaker's journey of discovery has irresistible momentum (Helen Dunmore The Times)

Ms Gilbert has established herself as a straight-up storyteller who dares us into adventures of worldly discovery, and this novel stands as a winning next act ... A bracing homage to the many natures of genius and the inevitable progress of ideas, in a world that reveals its best truths to the uncommonly patient minds (Barbara Kingsolver New York Times)

Charming and compelling ... A big novel in all senses - extensively researched, compellingly readable and with a powerful charm that will surely propel it towards the bestseller lists (Jane Shilling Daily Telegraph)

Gilbert has written the novel of a lifetime ( O, The Oprah Magazine)

Sumptuous ... Gilbert's prose is by turns flinty, funny, and incandescent ( New Yorker )

Quite simply one of the best novels I have read in years ... a bejewelled, dazzling novel (Elizabeth Day Observer )

Readers prepared to enter Gilbert Time will be rewarded: she is an unflaggingly curious writer, prone to delightful touches ... Gilbert's period interests seem boundless - she explores everything from self-sacrifice, to homosexuality, Darwinism and Victorian pornography ... This is a novel to be chewed over, slowly (Lucy Atkins Sunday Times)

A botanical odyssey through the nineteenth century, global in ambition, revelling in the period's insatiable curiosity about the world ... a tall tale, told with verve and wit ( Guardian )

Filled with dazzling storytelling (Susie Boyt Financial Times )

Book Description:

The New York Times bestseller

Elizabeth Gilbert's first novel in twelve years. An extraordinary story of botany, exploration and desire, spanning much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1408841894
• ISBN 13: 9781408841891
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 512