What do readers think of The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert? Write your own review.

I lived this book - and I DO mean LIVED. Gilbert makes you absorb her emotions as the title character experiences so many ups and downs, determined battles and yet lives in a mundane, albeit interesting life. There are touches of erotica, but only enough to accentuate the story. I loved it.

This is a story about Alma, growing up in Philadelphia in the 1800's with her father who is a self-made man with his domain in botany; her brilliant, no-nonsense mother who came from a family of botanists; her Dutch nanny; her reclusive adopted sister, Prudence; and, the many scientists and botanists who were frequent guests at the family home, White Acres. Alma, a homely girl, grows up with a love of botany and an unquenchable thirst for knowledge of everything. Alma develops the “Theory of Competitive Alteration” which she based on her study of mosses and tried to apply to the evolution of all living things. This theory just as easily could have applied to Alma and how she herself altered as a result of many life-changing and heart-breaking events. This moving novel deals with so many issues: life in Philadelphia in the 1800s; the travel and trade of plants and trees in the development of gardens, greenhouses, and medicine; abolitionists; Darwin and like-scientists; life in Tahiti; sexuality; and, two sisters who were “doomed to love” men that they “could not possess” yet still carried on. I find myself, days later, still dwelling on aspects of the story.