The Signature of All Things is a novel by Elizabeth Gilbert. It was originally published in 2013 and longlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction. [1]
The Signature of All Things is a novel by Elizabeth Gilbert. It was originally published in 2013 and longlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction. [1]
The story follows Alma Whittaker, daughter of a botanical explorer, as she comes into her own within the world of plants and science. As Alma’s careful studies of moss take her deeper into the mysteries of evolution, she starts a spiritual journey which spans the 19th Century.
The reception to the book has been positive. Elizabeth Day of The Guardian praised the complex characters, calling "Alma's journey a universal one, despite anchoring her protagonist's life in a different time and sending her to the furthest corners of the unexplored earth." [2] Barbara Kingsolver of The New York Times labelled it "a bracing homage to the many natures of genius and the inevitable progress of ideas, in a world that reveals its best truths to uncommonly patient minds." [3]
Barbara Kingsolver is a Pulitzer Prize winning American novelist, essayist and poet. Her widely known works include The Poisonwood Bible, the tale of a missionary family in the Congo, and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, a non-fiction account of her family's attempts to eat locally. In 2023, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for the novel Demon Copperhead. Her work often focuses on topics such as social justice, biodiversity, and the interaction between humans and their communities and environments.
The Poisonwood Bible (1998), by Barbara Kingsolver, is a best-selling novel about a missionary family, the Prices, who in 1959 move from the U.S. state of Georgia to the village of Kilanga in the Belgian Congo, close to the Kwilu River.
The Bean Trees is the first novel by American writer Barbara Kingsolver. It was published in 1988 and reissued in 1998. The novel is followed by the sequel Pigs in Heaven.
Marilynne Summers Robinson is an American novelist and essayist. Across her writing career, Robinson has received numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2005, National Humanities Medal in 2012, and the 2016 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction. In 2016, Robinson was named in Time magazine's list of 100 most influential people. Robinson began teaching at the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 1991 and retired in the spring of 2016.
Ann Patchett is an American author. She received the 2002 PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize for Fiction in the same year, for her novel Bel Canto. Patchett's other novels include The Patron Saint of Liars (1992), Taft (1994), The Magician's Assistant (1997), Run (2007), State of Wonder (2011), Commonwealth (2016), and The Dutch House (2019). The Dutch House was a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
Animal Dreams is a 1990 novel by Barbara Kingsolver. A woman named Cosima "Codi" Noline returns to her hometown of Grace, Arizona to help her aging father, who is slowly losing his struggle with Alzheimer's disease. She takes a biology teacher position at the local high school and lives with her old high school friend, Emelina. Animal Dreams features Kingsolver's trademark—alternating perspectives throughout the novel. Most chapters are told from the perspective of Codi, while others are told from her father, Homer's, perspective. The book was dedicated to Ben Linder, who was killed by the Contras on April 28, 1987.
Elizabeth Gilbert is an American journalist and author. She is best known for her 2006 memoir Eat, Pray, Love, which has sold over 12 million copies and has been translated into over 30 languages. The book was also made into a film of the same name in 2010.
Maggie O'Farrell, RSL, is a novelist from Northern Ireland. Her acclaimed first novel, After You'd Gone, won the Betty Trask Award, and a later one, The Hand That First Held Mine, the 2010 Costa Novel Award. She has twice been shortlisted since for the Costa Novel Award: for Instructions for a Heatwave in 2014 and This Must Be The Place in 2017. She appeared in the Waterstones 25 Authors for the Future. Her memoir I am, I am, I am: Seventeen Brushes with Death reached the top of the Sunday Times bestseller list. Her novel Hamnet won the Women's Prize for Fiction in 2020, and the fiction prize at the 2020 National Book Critics Circle Awards. The Marriage Portrait was shortlisted for the 2023 Women's Prize for Fiction.
Rebecca Solnit is an American writer. She has written on a variety of subjects, including feminism, the environment, politics, place, and art.
Elizabeth Graver is an American writer and academic.
Lab lit is a loosely defined genre of fiction, distinct from science fiction, that centers on realistic portrayals of scientists and science as a profession.
The Women's Prize for Fiction is one of the United Kingdom's most prestigious literary prizes. It is awarded annually to a female author of any nationality for the best original full-length novel written in English and published in the United Kingdom in the preceding year. A sister prize, the Women's Prize for Non-Fiction, was launched in 2023.
Flight Behavior is a 2012 novel by Barbara Kingsolver. It is her seventh novel, a New York Times Bestseller, and was declared "Best book of the year" by the Washington Post and USA Today.
Elizabeth Day is an English novelist, journalist and broadcaster. She was a feature writer for The Observer from 2007 to 2016, and wrote for You magazine. Day has written six books, and is also the host of the podcast How to Fail with Elizabeth Day.
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves is a 2013 novel by the American writer Karen Joy Fowler. The novel won the 2014 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and was also short-listed for the 2014 Man Booker Prize.
Lisa Taddeo is an American author and journalist known for her book Three Women. Taddeo's work has appeared in The Best American Political Writing and The Best American Sports Writing anthologies.
Unsheltered is a 2018 novel by Barbara Kingsolver published by HarperCollins. It follows two families living in the same house at two separate time periods in Vineland, New Jersey. The novel alternates between the 21st century and the 19th century, using the last words of one chapter as the title of the next one. One family lived in the house in the 1800s and the other family resides in the house in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.
Janelle Brown is an American novelist.
Demon Copperhead is a 2022 novel by Barbara Kingsolver. It was a co-recipient of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and won the 2023 Women's Prize for Fiction. Kingsolver was inspired by the Charles Dickens novel David Copperfield. While Kingsolver's novel is similarly about a boy born into poverty, Demon Copperhead is set in Appalachia and explores contemporary issues.