Elizabeth Gilbet knows how to build worlds within her writing. so you open her books and you are right there. you are in for the duration and not sad to be so. it was actually her book City of Girls that bought me to her writing and not Eat Prey Love like most. and its that book that went on to cement my love for the way she writes.
Alma was a brilliant character to follow along. what a brilliant woman!also in her life she has some wonderful friends we get to know. each character in this book is imagined to perfection and i felt like they were living breathing people amongst the pages.
the way Elizabeth goes into her botany talk is also so captivating and unless she has somehow hidden her degree in this work from us the amount of research this book must have taken to write in inspiring.
this book is about so much. so much about growth of all things from the plants to science, to our characters themselves. Alma goes on a journey in this book and its one she aches to go on. shes trying to find her fit. trying to find herself whilst also battling against the times she lived in as a woman, as a daughter. how dare a woman be smart. how dare a woman use her intelligence or want to use it. how dare a woman....
this book took me entirely into its world and for the time i was there i didn't want to leave. it felt like i was floating around in pages so beautifully told, so wonderfully researched.
you know when books are just good. you get books that are just really really good books. you dont need to know anything but that and to read it. read it now and you wont regret it.

Set in the 18th/19th centuray this tale follow the Whittaker family and their interest and work in botany.

it is a well researched read and at times I had to remind myself that this was a work of fiction, such is the brilliance of the author it has a feel of reality.

it is an interesting and as you would expect covers themes of feminism, sexuality alongside the botanical aspect.

It is at times deeply sad and a moving read and alma and ambrose are fascinating characters. Alma's journey through life is as spiritual as it's interesting.

i loved it

Gilbert creates a dazzling novel that takes the reader all the way from the greenhouses of 18th-century Kew Gardens across oceans to America, Tahiti and Holland. The result is a book that is epic in scope but human in resonance.

A book about enlightenment: understanding each other, connection and the natural world it is set against a backdrop of enormous technological and scientific change.

Savant Alma Whittaker is born with the century in 1800 in Philadelphia and yearns for friendship, love and knowledge. Her Dutch mother Beatrix is formidably intelligent and her powerful and irascible father Henry is a self-made man of enormous wealth and ambition. Alma is no beauty and has little opportunity for friendship but she is a brilliant scientist and a shrewd business woman combining her parents’ skills. She is also a fighter and survivor like her father.

Her early self discovery with the poignant‘Binding Room’ is beautifully described and her joy at meeting Ambrose Pike, a flash of pure beauty in Alma’s steady middle age is at once exquisite and alarming to read: will Alma find physical intimacy at last after a life time of frustrated abstinence?

Alma Whittaker is so believable, so deeply drawn and so likable for her complexity and open spirit, that it is impossible not to be engrossed by every twist and turn of her thoughts and imaginings as we follow her life from birth to very old age.

I don't know why I had missed this book, considering how many I have read by this author, but it is certainly one of the ones I enjoyed the most. On the one hand, Alma's character is definitely fascinating, both because the parallels between self-discovery and the discovery of the evolution of plants and in particular mosses seemed to me to be well constructed, and on the other hand, because the drive for the pursuit of knowledge always seems to me to be a good thing to take a cue from.

Non so perché questo libro mi fosse sfuggito, considerato quanti ne ho letti di questa autrice, ma sicuramente é uno di quelli che mi é piaciuto di piú. Da una parte il personaggio di Alma é decisamente affascinante, sia perché i paralleli tra la scoperta di se stessi e la scoperta dell'evoluzione delle piante ed in particolare dei muschi, mi é sembrata ben costruita, dall'altra, perché la spinta alla ricerca della conoscenza mi sembra sempre sia una cosa giusta da cui prendere spunto.

Exactly as I expected from this fabulous author. The story gripped me right from the beginning with amazing characters. I definitely recommend