The Signature of All Things

The latest effort from blockbuster author from Elizabeth Gilbert is the novel, The Signature of All Things. I read it. I scratched my head. I read some more. Hmmmm….

It wasn’t that I didn’t like it. It wasn’t that I did. It was just…what an odd book. What a very odd book indeed.

Alma Whitaker is a woman born into privilege in 18^th century Philadelphia. Her father is the irascible Henry Whitaker, a low-born Englishman and amateur botanist who makes it his mission in life to acquire tons of money so he can thumb his nose at the high society types who snubbed him (mission accomplished, by the way). Henry is a tough character to like-his deathbed comments on the subject of sailing during his youth are just, well, icky. He is at least a character, though. Alma never really shines the way her father does. Bookish and intelligent, she spends her youth studying botany, languages, etc. etc. She adores geometry and Greek. She dedicates her life to the study of plants. She is deadly dull, frankly; not in itself a problem, but still….I mean, we are talking dull.

So, to assuage her dullness, Alma discovers a passion for a new hobby: locking herself in the binding closet in the library and, er, alleviating the tension that builds from reading certain risqué, banned books. Catch my drift? Well, this mundane activity that millions of girls the world over likely indulged in is apparently a very important part of Alma’s life, as it is referenced again and again in the book. That remains sort of the only thing that happens until Prudence shows up.

Prudence is the orphaned daughter of a prostitute. She is taken in by Alma’s mother, a staunch Dutch woman who is a bright spot in this strange tale. Once adopted, Prudence serves little purpose in the story aside from making the reader go insane over how dull and lifeless and nearly catatonic she is. Alma, too, nearly goes mad, for not only is Prudence cold as ice, she is also extremely beautiful, so she’s doubly annoying. Upon talking to the family housekeeper later in life, Alma learns some facts about Prudence that explain a good deal of her inscrutable character – but the facts are not interesting enough to justify the existence of the girl in this book.

Another character I puzzled over was Rhetta. I wanted Rhetta to have a point. I thought her entrance into the story was a signal that something was going to happen to Alma that was exciting. Alas, no. Although Rhetta has a fate that isn’t exactly as dull as Alma’s (cloistered nuns don’t lead a life as dull as Alma), she doesn’t seem to have an effect on the destiny of the central character aside from putting into relief some facts about her life (facts too revealed in that later conversation with housekeeper).

When a talented young man named Amos comes to White Acre, the family home, Alma’s days of locking herself in the binding closet seem to be at an end. After some unique experiences together, they marry and begin an unconventional and unhappy marriage that leaves Alma mystified. Here, one feels for Alma. She may be as boring as sin, but she is a woman after all and what transpires between her and Amos is sad. And sad for him as well. Not cry over it sad. Not, “I can’t put this book down” sad. Just sort of a downer. It at least propels Alma to do something at long last. However, what she does ends up being sort of odd. At any rate, she has an adventure and the story drags on with uninspired revelations (a person ends up having an unusual name she thought meant something else, for example) and somewhat dull characters. (A minister who simply does not see the harm in anything ever, oh-what-a-lovely-man.)

While I seem to be knocking this tale of…a middle aged scientist quasi-shut-in woman…I really am not. I am just figuring it out. It is a wonderful book and an awful book at the same time. The opening third of the story is quite nice. The saga of Henry Whitaker is terrific. Knowing Gilbert’s ways, we can be confident that whether in the parlor of a lord who is scoffing at him or on the deck of a ship piloted by none other than Captain Cook, Henry’s experiences could have been authentic. Upon making good and settling in America, he marries and has Alma. The second part of this book dries up a little to me. It is largely concerned with Alma’s research, her time in the binding closet and her relationships with her peers – namely Prudence, Rhetta and George, a colleague and friend who lives nearby. These four young people have overlapping and conflicted relationships with each other that come to light later. The final third seems to lag. Just what Alma is hoping to accomplish is okay, but not enough to propel a person across the world in a day and age when travel was extremely difficult. In fact, what  I enjoyed most was hearing about her journey from Philadelphia, around the Cape of Good Hope, through the South Seas to Tahiti – a woman alone on a boat with only men for months 200 years ago is a cool things to read about. But once she lands in Tahiti I lost it. I literally was falling asleep while reading half the time.

Yet something is making resist panning it. The writing was lovely. The language and mood were consistent with the time and place in which the story was supposed to have occurred. The book was jammed with facts and populated with smart people, so one feels smart while reading it. And becomes a little smarter too (I did not know, for example, that when starving it is better to eat bugs than to waste the energy hunting. Good to know). It’s an odd book about people who accomplish very little in their lives that benefits the world at large, an idea that is explored in the juxtaposition of Alma’s life and who Prudence eventually becomes. Gilbert’s voice shines through – her love of travel, her preoccupation with sex, her mile-wide feminist streak - and with Gilbert, you always get a good dose of humor.

 If you are a Gilbert fan (c’mon, who isn’t) then I actually would not not  recommend this. It’s a part of her body of work and her work is all united by how damn intelligently she writes. That shines through from Captain Cook’s ship decks to the darkness of a binding closet. Weird….but intelligent nonetheless.