Jules reviewed Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver
Review of 'Animal, Vegetable, Miracle' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
As an evocation of the pleasures involved in growing and cooking your own food in tune with the seasons this book was outstanding, and it also provided a fascinating overview of the problems caused by industrial agriculture in the US. I appreciated the author's nuanced discussion of organic certification as perhaps being more a measure of how capable a farmer was of paying for it than of the sustainability of farming practices, but this unfortunately made the occasions where she took a more kneejerk position (local is always best for the environment, genetic modification is always evil) more glaring. Some of it was also rather inconsistent - we shouldn't worry about supporting farmers in less economically developed countries if what they do is harmful, but we should support Virginia tobacco growers even though what they produce is harmful?
I felt it rather lost its way in the middle: there sometimes …
As an evocation of the pleasures involved in growing and cooking your own food in tune with the seasons this book was outstanding, and it also provided a fascinating overview of the problems caused by industrial agriculture in the US. I appreciated the author's nuanced discussion of organic certification as perhaps being more a measure of how capable a farmer was of paying for it than of the sustainability of farming practices, but this unfortunately made the occasions where she took a more kneejerk position (local is always best for the environment, genetic modification is always evil) more glaring. Some of it was also rather inconsistent - we shouldn't worry about supporting farmers in less economically developed countries if what they do is harmful, but we should support Virginia tobacco growers even though what they produce is harmful?
I felt it rather lost its way in the middle: there sometimes seemed to be a slightly uncomfortable lack of awareness of why others may not be able to live such a sustainable, aware life as easily as the author's family could - while her calculations did show that by buying local, seasonal produce and growing their own they were able to save a substantial amount of money compared to unseasonal supermarket fruit and veg, this was partly dependent on owning a pressure canner, dehydrator and breadmaker, not to mention circa 800 square foot of fertile soil - I suspect the equation would look rather different if these things were taken into account. Her complaints about vegetarians also seemed rather strange (I seriously doubt there are any vegetarians out there who don@t know that some crop pests die even for their diet, the goal is to minimise suffering even though it's not possible to eliminate it entirely) particularly given that in the next paragraph she said she used to be one. And n a purely childish level, by the end of it I wanted to give her goody-goody nineteen year old daughter a shake, tell her she has her whole life ahead of her to worry about optimum nutrition, then send her out for a night on the town and tell her to live a little (I do have to acknowledge that her recipes are very good though).
Towards the end I did feel the book got back on track though, with a joyful celebration of the importance of food in family life and tradition and the return of life in spring. Overall a mixed bag but I'll probably reread it at some point and it has inspired me to want to learn to can properly next year instead of just freezing things.
