The Signature of All Things is a masterpiece ..................

The Signature of All Things

 Review by Jules Older

If ever a title inspired me to moveon.org, it’s Eat, Pray, Love. For earthbound, unspiritual, gluten-loving me, one of these things is not like the others. Thus, zero interest. Didn't read the book, didn't see the movie. Thanks but no thanks.

And if I'd realized that Elizabeth Gilbert wrote Eat, Pray, Love, I wouldn't have picked up her latest book, The Signature of All Things. That, it turns out, would have been a most major mistake.

For The Signature of All Things is the best book I've read since can't remember when. It’s one of the rare few that deserves to be called epic. It spans two centuries. Makes prolonged stops in London, Philadelphia, Peru, Tahiti and Holland. Delves deeply into flowers, mosses, Polynesia, science (including the origin of the word ‘science’), theories of evolution, printing, lithography, love and human desire.

And much as I loved the writing, I admired the research even more. Actually, the combination is what blew me away. Despite the prodigious study behind The Signature of All Things, you never see the strings. Tahitian culture, missionary culture, the culture of rare species of plants, the cultural divide in 18^th century London, the reserved culture of 19^th century Amsterdam all flow with grace and beauty into Gilbert’s prose.

Here's a sample:

“Take me someplace where we can be silent together.”

and:

“One thing was certain: Human Time was the saddest, maddest, most devastating variety of time that had ever existed. She tried her best to ignore it.”

and:

“She had never before been entrusted with fire. The torch spit sparks and sent chunks of flaming tar spinning into the air behind her as she bolted across the cosmos—the only body in the heavens who was not held to a strict elliptical path.

Nobody stopped her.

She was a comet.

She did not know that she was not flying.”

So, if you're looking for a book for a literary friend or a travel-loving friend or a history/science/botany-obsessed friend, you now have my recommendation. The Signature of All Things is a masterpiece. It really is the gift that keeps on giving. Maybe your friend will even let you borrow it.

Me, I'm gonna go out and get Eat, Pray, Love.

— jules