The Signature of all things

The signature of all things is the name of the 16th century theory...that god had imprinted a message on every plant on earth about what that plant was for. –Elizabeth Gilbert.

Born in the 'Age of Wonder', Alma Whittaker is the daughter of a wealthy botanical explorer who had traveled on Captain Cook's voyages. She has access to one of the greatest libraries in the New World and has spent her life studying mosses. Alma has an unquenchable curiosity and is driven to try to understand the master clockwork behind every (living) thing. The quest leads her to eminence in science but to disappointment in the realm of romance. The central episode of the novel begins in the 1850s when Alma meets and marries a botanical artist, Ambrose Pike. When intimacy between them fails she sends him to the island of Tahiti. A little more than 3 years later she receives word that Ambrose has died. In her father's footsteps, she travels to Tahiti to unravel the mystery of Ambrose's death where she finally finds some answers, and an understanding of the nature of survival. 

CITATION: Gilbert, Elizabeth, The signature of all things. London: Bloomsbury, 2013.

  I know there are few greater pleasures in life than to be completely subsumed by the work you are obsessed with.                                                                     –Elizabeth Gilbert.  

Eat, Pray, Love was a bestseller in 2006...but maybe if you weren't a fan of that book - you might like this one - because its a big, smart and beautifully written novel...an absolute highlight of the year. –Michael Cathcart, ABC radio.

Finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle (USA).

Also available in an illustrated edition, large print, audiobook, kindle ebook.

Viking reader’s  book club notes, including interview with Elizabeth Gilbert.

Go to the Elizabeth Gilbert official author website for interviews, videos, and a TED talk on thinking creatively.

 

Listen to an interview with Elizabeth Gilbert by Michael Cathcart on ABC radio.

Promotional video - Signature of all things:

A tale for the time being

'Hi! My name is Nao, and I am a time being. Do you know what a time being is? Well, if you give me a moment, I will tell you.'

 

Ruth is a novelist living on a remote island off Canada’s Pacific northwest. She discovers a lunchbox washed ashore. It could be debris from the 2011 Japanese tsunami. Inside the Hello Kitty lunchbox is a diary written by Nao, a 16 year old Japanese schoolgirl. Nao has decided there’s only one escape from her aching loneliness and her classmates’ bullying. But before she ends it all she wants to document the life of her great-grandmother. In a small cafe in Tokyo, Nao writes about the joy and heartbreak of family life and her great-grandmother, a 104-year-old Zen anarchist nun.  

CITATION: Ozeki, Ruth. A tale for the time being. New York Viking, 2013.  422 pages. 

Also available in large print , audiobook, ebook & kindle. 

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2013. 

Book promotional video.

Watch the author Ruth Ozeki video interview.

When Captain flint was still a good man

Young Cal lives with his parents on Loyalty Island. Each winter, Cal's father - a ship’s captain - sails to Alaska for 6 months to catch king crab. Cal feels the emotional gulf and tension caused by his father’s absence but knows their livelihood depends on it. He fills his head with stories of pirates on Treasure Island (where R L Stevenson created the original Captain Flint). When John Gaunt, the owner of the fleet dies suddenly, Cal wonders about the relationship his mother has had with Gaunt. His untimely death puts the fleet on the brink of collapse. Cal finds evidence that his father has resorted to desperate measures to save their way of life. Cal’s loyalty faces the ultimate test.

CITATION: Dybek, Nick. When Captain Flint was still a good man. New York : Riverhead Books, 2012.


...peopled with multidimensional characters and featuring well-drawn settings. Dybek writes well about family, about relationships and loyalty, about responsibility and community, and about all that passes from father to son. –Kirkus reviews

Read the transcript of an interview by Granta with author Nick Dybek.

Available on kindle and audiobook. 

Cloud Atlas

 

An ambitious novel presenting six different stories set in different time periods. Each story is read by the main character in the next chapter. After the sixth story, the other five stories are returned to and closed. The first begins in Chatham Islands (a remote Pacific archipelago off the coast of New Zealand) with the diary of a 19th-century notary. The second story shifts to 1931 with the letters of a penniless composer in 1931 Belgium. Then we meet a 1970s reporter who gets in the way of a nuclear energy company in California and a genetically engineered serf in a future "corpocracy" who slowly gains awareness of her plight. Finally we return to the Chatham islands, only centuries later in a post-civilisation world.

...brilliantly original fiction that reveals how disparate people connect, how their fates intertwine, and how their souls drift across time like clouds across the sky. – Goodreads   

Citation: Mitchell, David. The cloud atlas. London : Sceptre, 2004.

Available as a CD audiobook, kindle ebook + an enhanced edition with audio and video. Adapted for film starring Tom Hanks, Halle Berry.

Watch the video interview with David Mitchell :