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[Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>]

Review – Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, by Barbara  
Kingsolver with Steven L. Hopp and Camille Kingsolver

 This book is several things, a memoir, a polemic, a sermon, and a  
call to locavorism. On a small Virginia farm a family decides to  
experiment for one year eating mostly homegrown and locally-grown  
food. The cast is acclaimed writer Barbara Kingsolver, who gardens and  
writes the narrative, professor-husband Steven Hopp, who is allowed in  
the kitchen to bake bread and writes sidebar essays, late-teen  
daughter Camille, who writes observations, pertinent recipes and meal  
plans, and nine-year-old Lily, an earnest poultry entrepreneur.

 Kingsolver is an accomplished writer of mostly novels and is an  
alert and delightful wordsmith. In this nonfiction work, her writing  
is entertaining but lacks discipline; she bounces from object to  
subject like a child with too many toys. A chapter titled Molly  
Mooching (a Molly is a morel mushroom) provides history on the farm  
Steven bought some years ago, delivers an apologia for tobacco  
farmers, offers Appalachian flora trivia, takes us on a hunt for  
morels, puts potatoes and other early plantings in the ground,  
expounds on onions, interjects an essay by Steven titled Is Bigger  
Really Better? and concludes with Camille who writes Getting It While  
You Can, a teen’s perspective on her mother’s food plan and a recipe  
for Asparagus and Morel Bread Pudding. All of which is fun,  
disconcerting, and marginally useful.

 In addition to politics and sermons, twenty chapters take us through  
planning, planting, preparing, eating and preserving. Titles include  
Springing Forward, The Birds and the Bees, Growing Trust: Mid-June,  
Eating Neighborly: Late June, Zucchini Larceny: July, and Life in a  
Red State: August, a double-entendre of tomatoes and more politics.  
For dessert we accompany Barbara and Steven on a two-week second  
honeymoon in Italy.

 This book is a teaser. It titillates the reader with the benefits of  
home gardening but provides few gardening details; it teases with the  
compelling concept of locavorism but lacks inspiring success stories.  
Worst, it is naïve. Experienced gardener-writers like Eliot Coleman,  
author of Four-Season Harvest, know and show how to keep a garden  
going year-round. Kingsolver apparently feels that the gardening world  
dies in autumn and does not reappear until asparagus pops up in spring.

 Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is not useful as a reference book  
because, alas and inexplicably, there is no index. Thus, if the reader  
wishes to remember the names of the six companies that control ninety- 
eight percent of the world’s seeds, one must flip pages and hope for a  
lucky find. (It is in Chapter 3, titled Springing Forward.) You could  
write your own index. You could underline extensively and write key  
words at chapter beginnings. My messy alternative is to apply little  
sticky notes next to items I may wish to find again, so my copy now  
looks like a yellow-feathered flat bird.

 Back matter includes a bibliography, a list of organizations, and  
sources for Steven’s sidebar references. All of Camille’s recipes may  
be found on the web site: www.AnimalVegetableMiracle.com which has  
lots of photos. The site is a fun visit that puts a face on the  
people, the plants, and the animals.

 I agree strongly with the locavore movement. The present food  
production system is a soil damaging, oil depleting, nutrition  
compromising scheme designed for corporate, not human health. For more  
on all that I recommend Michael Pollan’s books: Omnivore’s Dilemma,  
and, In Defense of Food.

 Kingsolver has many fans so I hope that this book will create many  
converts to locavorism. But I’m skeptical, mindful of Steinbeck’s  
admonition that, “No one wants advice, only corroboration.” There is a  
plethora of advice in this book. But it will provide corroboration for  
those who are already concerned about the sad state of our food  
economy wherein any digestible item is supermarket available on every  
day of the year at great expenditure of oil and soil, at great  
reduction of flavor, at great loss to local communities and your  
checking account.

 I have three pieces of advice for the Hoppsolvers (author  
construction): grow much more garlic, keep it in a cool place, not  
behind the kitchen stove, and, stop making your bread with flour that  
has been oxidizing since it was ground--grind wheat and other grains  
just before making your bread; it will be nutritionally superior and  
even more delicious.

 In spite of being tossed from one subject to another time and again  
and learning almost nothing new about home food production, I enjoyed  
Kingsolver’s range of interests and her entertaining writing. So  
here’s a big thank you to all my homestead list friends who  
recommended that I read this book.