{"id":2545,"date":"2023-10-30T13:20:43","date_gmt":"2023-10-30T13:20:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mygardentalkstome.com\/?page_id=2545"},"modified":"2024-09-26T09:37:32","modified_gmt":"2024-09-26T08:37:32","slug":"orwells-roses-rebecca-solnit","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/mygardentalkstome.com\/index.php\/orwells-roses-rebecca-solnit\/","title":{"rendered":"Orwell’s Roses – Rebecca Solnit"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Publisher: Granta (www.granta.com)\u00a0<\/p>\n

Buy: \u00a38.99 Amazon (currently)<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s start with what this book is not. It\u2019s not a book about roses. It\u2019s not a biography of George Orwell. It\u2019s not an instructional manual. Indeed, I find it somewhat easier to note what it\u2019s not, than to pin down what it is! Not a great start to a book review so I\u2019ll nail my judgemental colours to the mast and state from the outset that I loved the book.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s a well-worn clich\u00e9 \u2026\u00a0every book is a journey<\/em>\u00a0\u2026 and I\u2019m OK with that, and this journey was totally unexpected. The book is beautifully written, moving, challenging, and ultimately rewarding. It begins with the sentence \u201cIn the spring of 1936, a writer planted roses<\/em>.\u201d The writer was George Orwell, and from that first sentence we are escorted across millennia, across continents, into working class households and the estates of the landed gentry, around vast rose factories and into cottage gardens. We explore connections between 18th<\/sup>\u00a0century portrait painters and 20th<\/sup>\u00a0century writers, engage in debates about the nature of truth, beauty, and the reality of lived experience.<\/p>\n

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Try and imagine following this as a map through the book:\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Orwell \u2026 slavery \u2026Naziism \u2026 coal-mining \u2026 the carboniferous era \u2026 revolution \u2026 bread & roses \u2026 Stalin \u2026 lemon trees \u2026 the Enclosure Act \u2026 gentility \u2026 Ralph Lauren \u2026 The River Orwell.<\/p>\n

\"\"Is the book an exploration of a writer\u2019s life and evolving political positioning through the medium of roses, or an exploration of roses alongside a consideration of Orwell\u2019s evolving political thinking? It\u2019s feels unfair to precis this book in such a simplified way, but if pushed, I would say the former rather than the latter. It doesn\u2019t sound like a light read, does it? But Solnit has a way of writing that draws you in, engages you at both an intellectual level and an emotional level, deftly weaving the facts into a tapestry that unfolds in a measured way.<\/p>\n

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Within the book there are many turns of phrase that left me smiling (in an envious way) \u2013\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\u201cFlowers are powerful, and all humans lead lives intertwined with them, whether we notice or not<\/em>\u201d\u00a0p17<\/p>\n

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\u201cA garden is what you want (and can manage and afford), and what you want is who you are, and who you are is always a political and cultural question.\u201d\u00a0<\/em>p149<\/p>\n

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\u201cParadise is a walled garden, defined in part by what it shut out<\/em>\u201d (sic)\u00a0p173<\/p>\n

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\u201cScent is a kind of voice, a way in which flowers speak<\/em>\u201d\u00a0p213<\/p>\n

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The book is punctuated with, (what were for me), surprising \u201creveals\u201d about Eric Blair (Orwell). His connections to the artist Joshua Reynolds, his love of gardening in general, and specifically, vegetable gardening, and it is clear that the author has gone one step further than mere due diligence when it comes to the underpinning research. Without presenting a \u201clook at how much I\u2019ve read\u201d style, she uses her breadth of knowledge in a focused, gentle, and contemplative way. There was an unintended prescience in much of the writing. In exploring ancient and more recent historical events (Stalin, totalitarianism, \u2026), there were clear parallels in relation to current global issues (climate change, anti-democracy, Trumpian thought).<\/p>\n

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It would be easy to paint a somewhat \u201cbleak\u201d picture of a man whose name is simultaneously associated with a dystopian view of past, present, and future worlds. However, towards the end of the book, Solnit gently challenges the notion of \u201cOrwellian\u201d as being in and of itself a pejorative term. This feels fair \u2026 and I\u2019m comfortable with that.<\/p>\n

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Who might enjoy this read?<\/strong><\/p>\n

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My sense is that those who are passionate about gardening, who can appreciate a well written, factual exploration of a well-known writer, and who have a leaning to political exploration, will really enjoy the book (as I did).\u00a0<\/p>\n

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I will leave you with one of my favourite captures from the book. It doesn\u2019t come from Solnit herself but from her friend Joe Lamb (tree surgeon & poet). In a discussion of the carboniferous era, and within that, photosynthesis, he states that:<\/p>\n

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\u201cOne way of looking at trees is that they are captured light\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\n

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\u2026 Beautiful.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tBack to \"Reviews\"<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 Publisher: Granta (www.granta.com)\u00a0 Buy: \u00a38.99 Amazon (currently) Let\u2019s start with what this book is not. It\u2019s not a book about roses. It\u2019s not a biography of George Orwell. It\u2019s not an instructional manual. Indeed, I find it somewhat easier to note what it\u2019s not, than to pin down what it is! Not a great […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2545","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygardentalkstome.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygardentalkstome.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygardentalkstome.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygardentalkstome.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygardentalkstome.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2545"}],"version-history":[{"count":95,"href":"https:\/\/mygardentalkstome.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2545\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5282,"href":"https:\/\/mygardentalkstome.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2545\/revisions\/5282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygardentalkstome.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}