![]() ![]() THE SIGNATURE OF ALL THINGS is a “wonderful” book. ![]() please explain to me why Alice Walker told her audience. (And, no, it doesn’t turn out that she’s really the illegitimate child of pater familias.) Rather, she is given the Whittaker name and presented to Alma as her new sister. She is taken into the Whittaker’s stately home, not as a ![]() Then there’s Prudence, neé Polly, an incredibly beautiful child, whose father, a worker on the Whittaker estate, has murdered his wife and killed himself. Alma is a large, homely, awkward girl who grows up to be a large, homely, awkward but accomplished botanist, the author of several well-received scholarly books. Amongst the botanical esoterica are sketches of the 19th century Whittaker family: the crude, low-born patriarch who has made a fabulous fortune in botanical pharmaceuticals his stolid Dutch wife, Beatriz and their only surviving child, Alma. The first hundred pages read as if Gilbert had come across some botany books and wanted to make sure she stuffed every single fact they contained into this novel. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |