Monday, June 8, 2015

A non-book-review book review


To write a “book review” of  The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert somehow seems presumptuous of me.

First, a “review,” as I understand reviews, would have me tell you a bit about the story. I do not want to do that.  For once, I picked the book up just because of the author and my love of her writing. I did not read anything about it beforehand.

The title was enough to pull me into it on its own. The title resonates. What was this “signature?” I found out…but not before something like Page 497 (of 500), and even then it’s something your book club can debate for a long time. I’m still thinking about it myself.

So, I’m glad I approached it that way, for to have nestled up to any spoilers would have been unthinkable. I did not want to know “what the book is about” beforehand. I’m glad I did that, because it made everything in it a wonder, and with wonders loaded it is.

Signature is really an epic, I’d say. It covers most of the 18th and 19th Centuries, and it ranges from London to Philadelphia and more wondrous places than you might ever imagine. The story it presents is more richly researched than any I’ve read in a long time.

Her classy writing moved me forward like not many other books. Even at 500 pages, it presented no temptation to stop, as have others of that length. It never seems to drag, and it may not even be long enough. I would have liked for the goodies of plot and character development to never stop.

But that would have been impossible, for Gilbert’s characters are one-offs, singular, never-to-be born-anew as somebody else.

Simply stated, “there is no there there,” as Gertrude Stein once wrote.