Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is part autobiography, part how-to guide to a healthy lifestyle, and part primer on a variety of topics related to food. The author, Barbara Kingsolver, claims that the book is not intended to be read as a how-to guide to running your own farm, however due to the depth of her descriptions; it can feel like one at times. This is due to the fact that almost all of the information provided is useful in day to day life. Kingsolver assumes that the reader, like most Americans, knows very little about growing their own food and living off only the land they have around them.
The author’s points have caused us to really think about the foods that we eat every day and where they actually come from. We never realized that some of the foods we eat are not in-season locally and that they may have traveled from the other side of the world for our consumption. The author uses an authoritative tone; in one example she discusses her background knowledge of tobacco farmers. In chapter 5, she mentions how the tobacco plant is chemically altered after it leaves the farm, yet a large majority of the tobacco plantations are being shut-down due to health concerns such as cancer. The reader just has to trust in the fact that she did enough research to know what she is talking about. Kingsolver does offer references at the end of the book but she does not tell us what information came from which source.
As an example of how Americans do not appreciate the process of growing food, Kingsolver relates two stories from when her family moved from Tuscan to Virginia. The first is the story of a convenience store clerk in Arizona. As rainclouds start rolling into the desert sky, the clerk expresses irritation at the prospect of rain on her day off. This is despite the fact that Arizona was in the middle of a three year long drought. Once they arrive in Virginia, they eat out at a diner when storm clouds roll in for the second time in the narrative. The waitress watches the clouds for a minute and hopes that it does not rain hard enough to wash out the crops. The two stories highlight the contrast between farmers who know the needs of the crops used to feed the nation, and the laypeople who know little about food beyond the step where it ends up on the store shelf.
Another thing that interested and surprised us was the chapter on asparagus. We never knew that tastes of asparagus, and all vegetables, begin to lose their taste and nutritional value the second they are cut from their plant. We thought that it takes at least a few days before the process of losing its flavor started. This means that even when vegetables are “fresh” at the grocery store they are not nearly as tasty or delicious as they once were. It also makes us interested in how good the vegetables which we like the grocery store version really are if eaten right after they are harvested and prepared correctly.
We are also excited that the story is becoming more about family life. One concern we have is that the book will not have any conflict and end up being page after page of facts that are interested but after awhile we will become numb to this fact. We feel that the story would be well served, as a book, if there is a disaster or some other form of conflict. We want to see the family struggling to survive, not just harvesting and enjoying their garden. In addition the quality of the facts have began to drop down, it seems she used all of her good juicy facts at the beginning of the book to catch our attention and now she is filling the pages with less interesting and unimportant facts. One of the things that have not gotten old is the point of view of the daughter and the recipes she gives us, the readers. We also like her weekly mean plans for the different seasons because you can see how root plants and chicken are the only things they have available to them.
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