Director’s Notebook
December, 2013
I have just finished reading The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert (author of the bestseller Eat, Pray, Love). I have spoken with a few people who finished reading The Signature of All Things, and I find it interesting that there appears to be a wide range of opinions about the book. One reviewer said she loved it and found it endlessly fascinating, while another reader said it was boring and not worth finishing. I think the reason for the disparity of opinion about this book is that in some ways it is a book with a split personality!
On the one hand , The Signature of All Things is a story about love in all its forms, love between men and women, love between children and their parents, love among siblings, and love for dearly held principals or passions. The book’s protagonist Alma Whittaker participates with varying degrees of success in all these love relationships. Her intense search for love drives the story and generates our alternating feelings of compassion or impatience for her.
On the other hand, Alma’s primary passion, for science, observation, and classification brings an entirely different slant and depth to the book. Anyone interested in the history of science, or in botany, evolution, natural science, or the accomplishments of women in science would find this aspect of the story equally as compelling as Alma’s emotional struggles, if not more so. I am interested in all the subjects I just mentioned, so I loved reading about Alma’s painstaking, scientific observations and theories which eventually led her to a revolutionary insight. However, I can understand that not all readers would be willing to plow though pages of Alma’s close, not to say obsessive, observation of mosses, a study she devotes most of her life to and which occupies a major portion of her time, thought, and intelligence.
Yet it is Alma’s lifelong passion for mosses that defines her personality and determines her place in the world. It is her obsessive, perfectionist need to understand the natural world and her ability to extrapolate her findings to include the world of humans that leads to her astounding insights and ultimately prevents her from sharing her theories with the world.
The Signature of All Things is not an easy read; it is long and complex and at times too full of coincidences to be entirely believable. However, it is also quite thought-provoking. The character of Alma is fully developed and entirely believable in her many errors, misunderstandings, passions, and regrets. Throughout her long life ( a period that encompasses 1800 up through the early 1880’s), Alma never fails to be her own worst enemy; but she is also a woman of extraordinary ability, determination, courage, and ultimately, compassion and wisdom.
