Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life.

ANIMAL, VEGETABLE, MIRACLE A Year of Food Life BY BARBARA KINGSOLVER, WITH STEVEN L. HOPP AND CAMILLE KINGSOLVER HARPERCOLUNS 2007, 370 PAGES, $26.95

If you already feel guilty about eating fast food on the run, do not read this best-seller from the author of The Poisonwood Bible. It will send you to a psychiatrist in a hurry. Essentially, it is the story of a back-to-nature movement Barbara Kingsolver and her family made when they relocated from arid Arizona to Appalachia, where her husband owned farmland. She had a fire in her belly to return to the simpler life of growing one's own food and living without all the luxurious "necessities" most of us regard as essential to the good life. Along the way, she berates urban development, car washes that waste scarce water, the costs of shipping food cross-country, genetic tampering with food and animals, pesticides, and what have you. Cruelty to animals in the food-producing industry is another complaint, especially regarding chickens, a market cornered by big corporations, which produce 98% of the nation's poultry.

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Kingsolver is a scold in the manner of hatchet-wielding Carrie Nation and the temperance movement of old. She rants that, "We are a nation with an eating disorder." Her anti-capitalist spleen is vent on nearly everyone in sight who doesn't see things her way. She writes, "When Americans buy soy products from Brazil, for instance, we're likely supporting an international company that has burned countless acres of Amazon rain forest to grow soy for export, destroying indigenous populations."

Sympathetic to Jeffersonian ideals, she explains how we have lost touch even with how food is produced. She takes us through the seasons of harvesting home-grown veggies, and the joy of anticipation when ready to eat. Gardening almost is a moral experience, as it teaches the "benefits of patience and restraint" (Don't pick the zucchini too soon!) In some clever writing, she tells us of "waiting for the fruit to ripen in places where people are wearing bikinis."

Since eating is a family affair, a family council is suggested as to what should be planted and who should take which jobs in planting and harvesting. She has almost nasty remarks about unnecessary calories and obesity. (Interestingly, few pick on the Shakespearean "lean and hungry look of Cassius") What is that phrase, "Hell hath no fury like a woman's scorn?" At the family's farm, spring water is used, and honey instead of sugar is the sweetener of choice. (I wonder how rhubarb would taste with this?) In the quest for happiness, she tells us that canning can prolong the joy of eating the food one grows.

Along the way, we get a pop course in botany (her scientist brother helps out here) and we are surprised by how much we don't know about how food grows. Many don't realize potatoes have leaves above the ground, or that pineapples grow on bushes. The author suggests that schools should teach a basic course in agriculture. Not a bad idea--if the course it replaces is algebra.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is written in a homey, folksy way, but seems to carry undertones of social engineering. It begins with an account of the detail work involved in moving cross-country. However, Kingsolver gets down to business in the second chapter--a prelude of what is to come, as it is entitled "Waiting for Asparagus." It tells all you wanted to know about that plant but were afraid to ask. Oh yes, Barbara's daughter has a few pages on asparagus as well, replete with recipes.

So, back to salads, folks, if you want to stay in the author's good graces, but remember the lettuce, carrots, radishes, cakes, etc. must be home-grown. Return to the days of World War II with a Victory Garden. Do your own food growing and send those migrant workers back where they came from. We can live without them, can't we?

Reviewed by

GERALD F. KREYCHE

American Thought Editor