Customer Reviews

The Fruit Hunters: A Story of Nature, Adventure, Commerce, and Obsession

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

First of all I have to say that I'm not a big fruit eater. I like the taste of most fruits, but the ones I buy in the supermarket are waxy, bland, and have textures that don't correspond to how I think the fruit looks.

I was reading an early posting of the Sunday New York Times book review last week and I came across Mary Roach's review of this book. The review was so outstanding that it made me want to explore the book, even though I'm not particularly inclined to fruit or nature writing. The next day I went out and bought the book and read it almost in one sitting. I was transfixed, to say the least. And hungry: Gollner's book made me want to jump on a plane to Brazil and find all the marvelous fruits that he wrote about, fruits that made my mind spin and mouth salivate. Who knew there were such delightful things such as the "bran muffin" fruit? Reading this book is feels like an illicit glimpse into the Garden of Eden.

Gollner is a great writer: funny, brisk, informative without being too didactic. His pacing and narrative abilities are excellent; what could have been a dull book about colorful things reads like a thriller at times. This book to me a little like the exotic fruits Gollner so vividly and lovingly describes: it's a rare pleasure that I'm lucky I discovered.

When I ran across this title at Barnes and Noble, I assumed it was a Mark Kurlansky type treatment of the subject, erudite and educational, but not really my cup of tea. Boy was I wrong! I had googled miracle fruit since I had done some research on the subject, and I found that there was a chapter in this book on that subject. I went right out and bought a copy, read the chapter. I had no idea of the real story behind miracle fruit (which, by the way, is experiencing skyrocketing prices thanks to this book). I read the rest of the book. Adam has a quirky sense of humor which translates very well in writing. Anyone that is interested in ethnobotany, fruit, plants or just a great summer read on the beach should buy the book. Let's hope Mr. Gollner is working on his next book.

Adam Leith Gollner's new book The Fruit Hunters (2008) is like a sweet and sour jawbreaker---- a tasty treat with many layers to enjoy, never knowing which flavour comes next. Anyone who loves exotic fruit and adventures in far off places will savour this book and all of its fruit-filled wanderings.

I once had the opportunity to eat cottony guanabana in Costa Rica, and to sip dragonfruit juice in Vietnam.... Now that I am strapped to my desk, and limited to munching on banal fruits like apples and oranges, I greatly appreciated being able to travel to far-off places with Gollner as he explored fruit hunting stomping grounds like Brazil and the Congo.

Gollner's writing is an intriguing mix of delicate prose and hipster slang--a modern style that is entertaining and thoughtful. I would highly recommend this captivating and informative book to anyone who is a fruit bat like me; it's full of fun fruit-filled history and trivia (and has an excellent index for double-checking fruit facts).

If, like me, you are still eating your way through all of the recent and exciting food-focused books like Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation (2001), Michael Pollan's The Botany of Desire (2001) & The Omnivore's Dilemma (2006), and Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (2008), this book makes a sweet addition to your forays into agriculture, food production, shady food histories and politics, and the commodity chains that land things in our grocery carts, our fruit bowls, and our bellies. So... prepare a nice dish of salted green mangoes and settle down with The Fruit Hunters--you will not be disappointed!

I picked up this exotic zinger at an airport on the way to Buenos Aires. Let me first recommend that you do not read this book without at least a bowl of fruit or fruit salad in arm's range. Or a tutti frutti lollipop at least. I can only describe this book in almost synesthetic terms. The story is delicious, the writing is like a confection of candied apples, each word dipped in miracle fruit. I highly urge you to pick up this scrumptious cocktail for your summer reading. It's perfect for the beach. You'll never taste words the same way again.

Journalist Gollner finds endless summer in his travels around the world seeking strange and luscious fruit at the very peak of quality. Alas for the rest of us, the best is always local, but Gollner shares his experiences so vividly it's almost like being there. Almost.

Check out his description of the miracle fruit, which turns sour flavors sweet, and has, incidentally, done wonders for the sales of this little berry:

"Where at first I could barely lick the puckeringly tart African lemon without wincing, now I'm gulping it down, licking up the juice on my chin. Even the bits on my teeth are ecstatically sweet, like liquefied filaments of pure joy. My head is swimming. Neurons never-before activated are firing up my central cortex. I greedily eat up the whole lemon, detecting hints of crystallized grapes and berries. While it isn't exactly 12345 Center of the Sun Avenue, it's definitely psychedelic."

The charm of Gollner's debut isn't just his sensuous, hip and funny writing style, or the infectious enthusiasm that will have readers longing to race off to Borneo for a soccer-ball sized tarap, which tastes like a "fully constructed dessert," or a mangosteen or a chempedak or, Borneo's most notorious fruit, the durian, a custardy delicacy with a smell so noxious a Manhattan tasting party emptied the building.

No, there's more. Gollner ferrets out the real fruit hunters, those who have dedicated their lives to fruits. These are an odd and varied bunch, from seriously fanatical scientists and growers to those who believe a pure fruit diet will lead to Nirvana, super wealthy hobbyists who indulge their passion by smuggling, and schemers who inject apples with grape flavor to produce grapples. The fruit world is apparently rife with talented nuts.

Gollner gets behind the politics of fruit - the buzz around miracle fruit's potential in the sweetener market and the sudden FDA ban that brought it all to naught; the reasons, from destructive pests to protectionism, that many fruits are banned from our borders, and the origin of the banana republic.

He delves into the marketing and shipping and consequent dearth of quality in our supermarket fruit; he explores health-giving properties and legends; he introduces varieties we never could even imagine like the lady fruit, which grows only in the Seychelles, has oversized parts which look like human genitalia and takes 7 years to produce a mature fruit.

He explores the world of fruit crime, from smuggling to money laundering, and the role of humans in producing the finest fruits. Fruit biology, history, even fruit intelligence, weaves through this entertaining, informative, even riveting narrative. Readers will look forward to tagging along on Gollner's next adventure.

My husband is scared. I have turned into a fruit monster.

Purchasing this book after reading the NY Times review, my husband lovingly gave me this book thinking only of my newfound passion for gardening and my ever enduring foodie love. He had no idea he would create a fruit monster! (RAWR!!!)

After reading The Fruit Hunters, I have now become born again to the magic of fruits. Because of this book, I can never look or taste fruits in the same way again.

Whether Gollner is recanting his tales of "flop[ping] around like a spawning salmon," in back of a Thai rickshaw hastily speeding through crowded streets en route to the food market where he will delightfully ingest moon fruits, mangoes, rambutans, and other south Asian delights, or riding passenger to a eccentric fruit obsessive who drives as though "the asphalt was his enemy, jabbing at the gas pedal and the breaks like a tap-dancing circus bear," or explaining how the McIntosh apple was only discovered only after its namesake exhumed his beloved lover's body first, you will find yourself engrossed and often laughing...... out loud...... heartedly...... (In fact, after devouring this book after two days of intense page turning, I gave it to my husband to peruse. After he began reading it and laughing to himself, I asked him to read whatever passage he was on out loud to me. He refused. He said if he did he wouldn't be able to read the book fast enough!)

Perhaps after reading this book, you will endure the same fate as me, snuggling to bed with seed catalogs and fruit books by your bed stand, thawing to eat strangely shaped fruits frozen in distant lands. But it will be well worth it to come to know that solely through fruit that the world is so much more exciting, rich, and varied than you ever knew it be.

Get this book!!! Be not afraid of the fruit monster that lurks within us all. If anything, your taste buds will thank you.

This book is a slapped together group of articles with no effort to unify them. There is much that is good and informative in the book but on general information the author is not to be trusted. For example a Persian saying "Women for breeding, boys for pleasure, but melons for sheer delight." is ascribed to Brazil. Also the author's reference Moon bases and Mars voyages in the present tense makes me wonder if he and I are in the same space/time continuum.

I knew the world was full of many amazing growing things I'd never heard of, and I knew the grocery store was a poor representation of the deliciousness fruit is capable of, but I had no idea of the fantastical sugar-plumb landscape of fruit that was out there.
Not only is this book highly informative, it's also really fun to read. Gollner's personal story is woven seamlessly through his discovery of amazing fruit and the fascinating/ wacky people who live by it. I felt like I was listening to a good friend tell stories from their adventures around the world.
A great read for the fruit obsessed and everyone else too!

As the title suggests, this book covers a lot of ground. Adam Leith Gollner writes about the history of fruit consumption, the many colorful characters (the Fruit Hunters of the title) both contemporary and past who have shaped the range of fruits available for consumption, and his own personal journey around the world to meet these people and consume an enormous diversity of tropical fruits not available in your local grocery store. This book contains many fascinating vignettes. We learn how pears used to be barely edible and fit only for cider, about the black market for fruit smuggling, and how some fruits can produce sweet tastes without any sugar. At times, the book is so loaded with facts or examples (if one is adequate, ten are good, thirty are put into print), it feels like sipping from a fire hose. The reward is a wealth of information packed into a small amount of space. After reading this book, you will never look at the produce section the same.

This book is terrific in audio format! While I agree with a lot of the critiques of this book (the reviews with fewer than five stars), the experience of listening to the book read aloud makes the flaws fade into the background. The reader makes this book come alive. Totally hilarious! In every chapter there is something that just busts me up laughing! Great entertainment, and very inspiring. I must track down a mangosteen or dragonfruit to try ..!