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.