Buy Book "The nature of all things" in Ukrainian

Greetings, dear readers!

I was very fascinated by the cover of this book. I was so fascinated by it that I ordered it without reading the annotations and reviews. The Old Lion Publishing House did a great job. Thank you!

And you know what? I was not mistaken.

The story of the main character penetrates to the very heart. Gilbert did an incredible job, because you get the impression that you are also living through all the events with a woman named Alma Whittaker. Together with her, you grow all kinds of moss, travel the world, and look for answers to mysteries that baffle you. You get a chill when something unpleasant happens. And warmth spreads in the soul when the heroine finds happiness and gains victories.

Page after page, chapter after chapter. This book has left a deep mark on my mind because it is so sensitive, vital, and problematic. The events are dynamic and full of emotions. The author was able to convey everything that her character felt. There is a structured plot and you understand the woman’s feelings from beginning to end. The feelings of all the characters around her.

Some events brought me to tears because I realized how honest and desperate people can be in their actions. How they can give up their own happiness for the sake of the happiness of others, and not say a word about it, not reproach, not be outraged.

I recommend this work to those who want to escape from reality a little bit. To those who lack nature and peace. To those who are lost in themselves.

We all know the components of a successful and happy life: health, self-realization, love, children, a beautiful home… You can swap the lines on the list, remove and add new ones, but what if you don’t have a few of the components? For example, you were unlucky enough to be born into a good family, or you didn’t get married, or you married the wrong person (which was not unusual in the nineteenth century), or you can’t just belong to yourself because, first of all, you are a woman, and secondly, you have to manage a huge estate as the sole heiress? Will you be able to be happy then?

“The Nature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert is a book about happiness. At least that’s how I perceived it. For someone else, it will be a book about the history of the theory of evolution, about the role of women in science in the nineteenth century, about family relationships, about plants, after all.

To be honest, I was happy from the first chapter about the young years of Henry Whittaker, the father of Alma, the main character. He was so lucky to work at the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew in London, and then went on an expedition as a botanist on ships with Captain Cook himself. After that, I would have read this book even if it turned out to be a boring treatise on the restriction of rights and exploitation of the working class. But there was nothing of the sort there.

“The Nature of All Things is the story of the life and research of Alma Whittaker, who, separately from Darwin, came to evolutionary theory. Alma Whittaker does not have a specific prototype, she is a fictional character, but in her we can see the features and history of women scientists in the nineteenth century, when science and research for women were considered a stupid eccentricity rather than a vocation and a worthy occupation.

But, as I said, for me personally, The Nature of All Things became a book not about science, but about happiness. About the fact that even when you don’t have the opportunity to “move mountains”, travel around the world, attend conferences as a guest speaker, and your world is limited to your garden, or even less – a few stones with moss growing on them – you STILL have a whole world and something to do. Because, after all, the BIG world is not so different from the small world.

It is a very powerful book. The events of this novel capture almost the entire 19th century, which was rich in discoveries in the natural sciences – chemistry, physics and biology.

This book will be especially useful for botany lovers and those who are familiar with and interested in Charles Darwin’s theory of the origin of species. There are very good descriptions of various plants and mosses. The book is about women and for women, like all the other books by the author, and perhaps men will find it boring and sometimes incomprehensible, but I think men can try to read it.

This book is about a woman who was not pretty, but very smart – Alma Whittaker, the daughter of a wealthy botanist at the time, but who was born into a poor family and managed to reach the top. Throughout the book, the author describes the biography of Alma’s life from birth to death. An interesting factor is that the Whittaker family were long-lived.

The girl, and later the woman, devotes her entire life to botany. She tries to understand the nature of plants, on the one hand, and the nature of things, or everything that exists, on the other.

I would call this novel a scientific adventure family saga.

I don’t want to go into the details of the plot and spoil it, but I will say that although Alma, in my opinion, had a difficult fate, despite the fact that she lived in prosperity and had everything, she considered herself the happiest woman on Earth.

I don’t know if I’ll want to re-read this book in the future, most likely not, but I can safely recommend it – it’s a good, high-quality women’s novel for a few comfortable autumn evenings.

My rating: 9/10