So, last night I wrote a 2000 word post on Lauren Groff's debut novel, The Monsters of Templeton (as well as other things, like the tension between history and fiction, and the cliche of women's fiction). I'd spent three hours writing it, on my day off, and I was quite pleased with it. Then I foolishly clicked publish just as my internet connection died, and my laptop flipped out with the blue screen of death. And everything I'd written was lost. Zap. And I had only saved the draft at the half way point.
I didn't cry, but it was a close call.
I'm not ready to rewrite it yet, or tap out any other review either, so that will have to wait. However, I did just finish Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: One Year of Seasonal Eating, and it is the sort of book that you don't so much review as recommend. So:
It is a very good book indeed. I enjoyed it immensely, partly because Barbara Kingsolver is an extroadinarily charming writer and partly because what she writes makes a whole world of sense about what is wrong with our food industry. The book recounts the Kingsolver's family's (largely successful) attempt to eat locally, seasonally and organically for a whole year, and involves their moving from Arizona to Virginia in search of a sustainable, small-holding life style. Yes, at times it comes across a little sappy, and maybe a little smugly too - we don't all have an acre in which to grow half a ton of tomatoes and enough chard to feed an army, or a meadow in which to graze free range chickens and turkeys - but mostly it is a paen to simplicity told in monthly installments, a rallying cry to eat as well and as ethically as possible. It is a book about trying to make the right choices in the face of the incredible wrongness of 21st century Western diets. There can't be much wrong with that, especially when so beautifully expressed. Some of descriptive gardening passages are lovely, and because Kingsolver keeps her preaching at a minimum, it is difficult not to yearn for a big welcoming hug in her kitchen:
Good people eat. So do bad people, skinny people, fat people, tall and short ones. Heaven help us, we will never master photosynthesis. Planning complex, beautiful meals and investing one's heart and time in their preparation is the opposite of self-indulgence. Kitchen-based family gatherings are process-oriented, co-operative, and in the best of worlds, nourishing and soulful. A lot of talk happens first, news exchanged, secrets revealed across generations, paths cleared. I have given and received some of my life's most important hugs with those big oven-mitts potholders on both hands.
It would be overwrought to suggest that this book will change your life, or to declare that it will has changed mine (any more than another book on this subject would, at least). But it definitely provoked me to change some our household habits. We're only buying free-range chicken from now on, no matter how cheap the alternative; and we joined a local fruit/veg box schemes that delivers each week. Both have been a revelation, and I have Barbara Kingsolver to thank for it in some small way. Is it sad that I'm looking forward to trying some of her recipes and feeling homely while I cook them?
I promise the Lauren Groff post when I've overcome my rage at loosing it the first time.
~~Victoria~~