The Signature of All Things
Elizabeth Gilbert, 2013
512 pp.

Book Review by Molly Lundquist
December, 2014
In this engaging historical novel, Elizabeth Gilbert combines a period romance with a slice of scientific history—similar to, but larger in scope than, Tracy Chavalier's Remarkable Creatures. And in Alma Whittaker, Gilbert gives us a fascinating—though unlikely—heroine: brainy, six feet tall, and plain in appearance.

Alma is a prodigy, mastering the rudiments of botany at an early age and eventually becoming a specialist in mosses. Unglamorous, overlooked, and doggedly persevering, mosses and Alma are a perfect match. Of course, like many a wallflower, Alma has her secrets—though none are to be revealed in this review.

Gilbert has populated her novel with vivid characters, starting with Alma's father Adam, digging (literally) his way out of poverty to surpass those who once mocked his lowly station. Adam's wife Beatrix, brilliant in her own right, schools Alma under the proviso that never "in history has a bright young girl...perished from too much learning." The description of the Whittakers' grand Philadelphia estate—the family life, dinner parties, greenhouses and surrounding grounds—provides some of the book's finest writing.

Epic-like in scope, the story begins in England in 1760, moves to Philadelphia in the 1800s, on to Tahiti, and eventually to Holland. There are marriages, madness, death, selfishness and self-sacrifice. And all the while, Alma peers into her microscope and out at the world—everywhere but within her own self—as she seeks "the signature of all things." What, Alma wonders, unites us and drives us—all living entities—to survive the perils and trials of life?

The Signature of All Things is a richly told story, long, dense, and beautifully descriptive. It offers a bird's eye view of the 19th century, with its clash between religious values and the burgeoning field of biology. Although the novel slogs a bit in the second half, even seeming not quite to fit with the first half, overall it's an enthralling, gripping read. It's Elizabeth Gilbert, after all.

See our Reading Guide for The Signature of All Things.