Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (P.S.)

Product Description

Author Barbara Kingsolver and her family abandoned the industrial-food pipeline to live a rural life—vowing that, for one year, they'd only buy food raised in their own neighborhood, grow it themselves, or learn to live without it. Part memoir, part journalistic investigation, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is an enthralling narrative that will open your eyes in a hundred new ways to an old truth: You are what you eat.



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Product Details
Amazon Sales Rank: #84 in Books
Published on: 2008-05-01
Released on: 2008-04-29
Number of items: 1
Binding: Paperback
400 pages

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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
In her engaging though sometimes preachy new book, Kingsolver recounts the year her family attempted to eat only what they could grow on their farm in Virginia or buy from local sources. The book's bulk, written and read by Kingsolver in a lightly twangy voice filled with wonder and enthusiasm, proceeds through the seasons via delightful stories about the history of their farmhouse, the exhausting bounty of the zucchini harvest, turkey chicks hatching and so on. In long sections, however, she gets on a soapbox about problems with industrial food production, fast food and Americans' ignorance of food's origins, and despite her obvious passion for the issues, the reading turns didactic and loses its pace, momentum and narrative. Her daughter Camille contributes recipes, meal plans and an enjoyable personal essay in a clear if rather monotonous voice. Hopp, Kingsolver's husband and an environmental studies professor, provides dry readings of the sidebars that have him playing Dr. Scientist, as Kingsolver notes in an illuminating interview on the last disc. Though they may skip some of the more moralizing tracks, Kingsolver's fans and foodies alike will find this a charming, sometimes inspiring account of reconnecting with the food chain.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From School Library Journal
Adult/High School–This book chronicles the year that Barbara Kingsolver, along with her husband and two daughters, made a commitment to become locavores–those who eat only locally grown foods. This first entailed a move away from their home in non-food-producing Tuscon to a family farm in Virginia, where they got right down to the business of growing and raising their own food and supporting local farmers. For teens who grew up on supermarket offerings, the notion not only of growing one's own produce but also of harvesting one's own poultry was as foreign as the concept that different foods relate to different seasons. While the volume begins as an environmental treatise–the oil consumption related to transporting foodstuffs around the world is enormous–it ends, as the year ends, in a celebration of the food that physically nourishes even as the recipes and the memories of cooks and gardeners past nourish our hearts and souls. Although the book maintains that eating well is not a class issue, discussions of heirloom breeds and making cheese at home may strike some as high-flown; however, those looking for healthful alternatives to processed foods will find inspiration to seek out farmers' markets and to learn to cook and enjoy seasonal foods. Give this title to budding Martha Stewarts, green-leaning fans of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth (Rodale, 2006), and kids outraged by Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation (Houghton, 2001).–Jenny Gasset, Orange County Public Library, CA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
Reviewed by Bunny Crumpacker

If you've ever been lucky enough to eat a tomato in the middle of summer, while it's still warm from the sun, if you've seen a farmer's market filled with fresh produce and happy people, if you've stopped at a farm stand, even (or especially) if it's just a table at the side of the road, you know the difference between the taste of real food and what's sold at the grocery store. But advocates of locally grown produce contend that it's much more than a matter of taste. There's the horror of stockyards and poultry farms and slaughterhouses, and the excessive amounts of energy needed to transport food from one part of the country to another and from the summer of another continent to the winter shelves of our town's stores. But beyond all this, supermarket vegetables and fruits are grown with chemical pesticides and fertilizers and patented modified genes, and supermarket meat comes from animals raised in dense crowds, given hormones and antibiotics (which we in turn swallow), and then killed with abiding cruelty.

To the swelling chorus of concern about the food we grow, buy and eat, add three powerful voices, the authors of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life. In a way, the book adds four voices, because its main author -- novelist, essayist and poet Barbara Kingsolver -- speaks in two tones. One is charming, zestful, funny and poetic, while the other is serious and dry, indeed sometimes lecturing and didactic. Both are passionate and caring.

Kingsolver has written most of the book, describing the year in which her family resolved to eat only food they had grown themselves, or that had grown within a hundred miles of their home, a farm in Virginia. The book's informative sidebars are by her husband, Steven L. Hopp, a biologist. Her daughter, Camille (in college, studying biology), has contributed engaging short essays for each month, accompanied by clear, uncomplicated recipes. (A younger daughter, Lily, was the family CEO of fresh eggs.)

Their remarkable year begins in April, when the first asparagus spears poke up from the ground. Sowing, weeding, watering, picking, canning, preserving and joyful eating follow the calendar, with an overabundance of zucchini in the summer, and the food the family has dried, frozen and canned seeing them through the cold months of winter. When March comes, about all that's left are a few quarts of spaghetti sauce, four onions, one head of garlic and, in the freezer, some vegetables and the last turkey.

The raising of the turkeys is a wonderful story all by itself, from the first fluffy babies to the mating, roosting and hatching of next year's batch. Turkey sex is an amazing saga, no less miraculous -- and perhaps even much more so -- than our own.

Can we all do this? Probably not. We may not have the necessary time, energy or access to a shared community plot. We may not be blessed with a sufficiently inspired -- and happy -- family. We may not be willing or able to spend the hot days of August canning all those tomatoes. And we may not have the freezer space (not to mention the barn) required for a year's supply of turkeys and chickens. But all is not lost -- unless we continue to lose it at the supermarket where the food we buy contributes to global warming on the long way from wherever it was raised. ("Americans," writes Hopp in a sidebar, "put almost as much fossil fuel into our refrigerators as [into] our cars.") The book offers a host of suggestions to make a difference, and there are lengthy lists of places to go, things to do and Web sites to visit. Alas, the book lacks an index.

This is a serious book about important problems. Its concerns are real and urgent. It is clear, thoughtful, often amusing, passionate and appealing. It may give you a serious case of supermarket guilt, thinking of the energy footprint left by each out-of-season tomato, but you'll also find unexpected knowledge and gain the ability to make informed choices about what -- and how -- you're willing to eat.

Copyright 2007, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.


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Customer Reviews
Life Changing
You will never think the same way about your living habits again! Highest recommendation! I have wished I could give this book to so many people, it is truly life changing!

Excellent book - everyone should read!
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is an amazing book! Although I'm a vegetarian, I found this book moving, life changing, relatable and real. Barbara Kingslover takes you through a year of her life when they decide to forgo everything that is not grown on their land, purchased at the local farmer's market, or purchased from local manufacturers/vendors. They are allowed to have one luxury item each and purchase their organic flour from an out of state source, but otherwise they live sustainably within a 100 mile radius. Absolutely amazing and incredibly motivating. Barbara's husband, Steven L. Hopp, writes small sections throughout the book that are powerful, research based and say more in a small box than many say in a whole book. Camille Kingslover, Barbara's daughter, ends the chapter with her viewpoint about "going local" from a teen's point-of-view and contributes both her family's weekly meal plans and recipes that are both simple and simply delicious. I was impressed by the fact that Steven makes fresh bread for the family almost every morning, and how their youngest daughter became an entrepreneur raising chicks humanely and selling their organic eggs, even to her own mother!

While I do not eat animals for ethical reasons, I admired Kingslover's conscious raising and humane killing of her animals. Her rendering about Thanksgiving and what it really means - giving Thanks for the land that gave the food and for the animals that gave their lives - brought me to tears. While I'll never eat meat, especially from a CAFO, I can appreciate the Kingslovers' approach to treating animals humanely throughout their entire life and only buying meat from farmers who hold the same beliefs as them.

This book is a diary of sorts, with interesting and educational tidbits along the way. It is also a how-to book - detailing how easy it is to live and eat locally no matter where you live and no matter what your circumstances are. It really is easier, healthier and gentler to the earth to eat organically and locally.


Brilliant
This book really is life-changing. I won't say much, (I'll leave that to Kingsolver herself) but I will say this. I've been a vegetarian for a long time (sometimes dabbling in veganism) and thought I understood "the issues." However, what I realized after reading this book is that it's not necessarily the eating of animal flesh that I am opposed to. It is industrial farming methods--the mass production and slaughter of animal lives in an inhumane way (after they have lived under the most horrendous conditions in "concentrated animal feeding operations"). This book illuminates the miracle of sustainable agriculture, and helped me realize that eating a Ritz cracker or even a conventionally-produced grain-filled veggie burger is potentially more deadly to the environment, the U.S. and local economies and the health of our families than eating a cow that has fulfilled the measure of its creation on a peaceful farm--to graze, mate, and live happily until it eventually becomes a source of life for another being that happens to be a bit higher on the food chain. That's nature, and I feel comfortable with that. I'm still not a huge fan of "hamburger" but this book has impacted the way I make food choices--from growing and purchasing, to preparing and eating. Knowingly or unknowingly, we all make significant choices everyday, and I would highly recommend this book to anyone wanting to be a little more educated about those choices.

Okay, I guess I did say a lot. :) Enjoy the book!