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Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life Paperback – April 29, 2008
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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.
- Print length400 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherHarper Perennial
- Publication dateApril 29, 2008
- Dimensions5.31 x 0.88 x 8 inches
- ISBN-109780060852566
- ISBN-13978-0060852566
- Lexile measure1160L
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“Charming . . . Literary magic . . . If you love the narrative voice of Barbara Kingsolver, you will be thrilled.” (Houston Chronicle)
“ANIMAL, VEGETABLE, MIRACLE makes an important contribution to the chorus of voices calling for change.”” (Chicago Tribune)
“If you...buy...one book this summer, make it this one...As satisfying and complete as a down home supper.” (Tucson Citizen)
“Engaging…Absorbing…Lovely food writing…[Kingsolver] succeeds at adopting the warm tone of a confiding friend.” (Corby Kummer, New York Times Book Review)
“A lovely book. ” (Los Angeles Times)
“[Written] with passion and hope…This novelist paints a compelling big picture-broad and ambitious, with nary an extraneous stroke.” (Rocky Mountain News)
“Homespun, unassuming, informed, positive, inspiring. . . . Unstinting in its concerns about this imperiled planet.” (Seattle Post-Intelligencer)
“A profound, graceful, and literary work . . . Timeless. . . . It can change who you are.” (Rick Bass, Boston Globe)
“Classy and disarming, substantive and entertaining, earnest and funny....Kingsolver takes the genre to a new literary level.” (Publishers Weekly (starred review))
“Kingsolver elegantly chronicles a year of back-to-the-land living…Readers...will take heart and inspiration here.” (Kirkus Reviews)
“Kingsolver beautifully describes this experience.” (More Magazine)
“Kingsolver dresses down the American food complex…These down-on-the-farm sections are inspiring and…compelling.” (Outside magazine)
“Faithful, funny, and thought-provoking...Readers-whether vegetarian or carnivore-will not go hungry, literally or literarily.” (BookPage)
“Equal parts folk wisdom and political activism . . . This family effort instructs as much as it entertains.” (St. Louis Post-Dispatch)
“Full…of zest and sometimes ribald humor… Reading this book will make you hungry.” (Raleigh News & Observer)
“Lessons learned in sustainability are worth feasting on-and taking to heart.” (Self)
“Every bit as transporting as-and more ecologically relevant than-any “Year In Provence”-style escapism...Earthy...informative....[and] englightened.” (Washington Post)
“Provocative . . . Kingsolver . . . evokes the sheer joy of producing one’s own food.” (People)
“An impassioned, sensual, smart and witty narrative…Kinsolver is a master at leavening a serious message with humor.” (St. Petersburg Times)
“Wry, insightful and inspiring to anyone who yearns to work with the earth.” (Chicago Tribune (on the audiobook))
“Kingsolver…adds enough texture and zest to stir wistful yearnings in all of us...[A] vicarious taste of domesticity.” (Christian Science Monitor)
“A terrific effort. The delight for readers…is the chance to experience the rediscovery of community through food.” (The Oregonian (Portland))
“Kingsolver, who writes evocatively about our connection to place, does so here with characteristic glowing prose. She provides the rapture.” (Miami Herald)
“If you’re interested in learning more about healthful eating, you’ll want to read…ANIMAL, VEGETABLE, MIRACLE.” (Charlotte Observer)
“Loaded with terrific information about everything from growth hormones to farm subsidies.” (Entertainment Weekly)
“Kingsolver carries us along in her distinct and breezy prose.” (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
“I defy anyone to read this book and walk away from it without gaining at least the desire to change.” (Bookreporter.com)
“Charming...and persuasive...Each season-and chapter-unfolds with a natural rhythm and mouth-watering appeal.” (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
“Anyone who read and appreciated THE OMNIVORE’S DILEMMA by Michael Pollan will want to read Barbara Kingsolver’s book.” (Roanoke Times)
“[This] is a book that, without being preachy, makes a solid case for eating locally instead of globally.” (Richmond Times-Dispatch)
“Highly digestible…Engaging.” (Ellen Goodman, Boston Globe)
“Other notable writers have addressed this topic, but Kingsolver claims it as her own....Self-deprecating instead of self-righteous.” (Charlotte Observer)
“Delectable . . . steeped in elegant prose and seasoned with smart morsels about the food industry.” (Chicago Tribune)
“[Kingsolver is] a master storyteller, and even those who’ve heard this tale before will be captivated.” (Daily News)
“ANIMAL, VEGETABLE, MIRACLE is a chronicle of food feats…I’m inclined to agree with most points Kingsolver makes.” (Chicago Sun-Times)
About the Author
Barbara Kingsolver's work has been translated into more than twenty languages and has earned a devoted readership at home and abroad. She was awarded the National Humanities Medal, our country's highest honor for service through the arts. She received the 2011 Dayton Literary Peace Prize for the body of her work, and in 2010 won Britain's Orange Prize for The Lacuna. Before she made her living as a writer, Kingsolver earned degrees in biology and worked as a scientist. She now lives with her family on a farm in southern Appalachia.
Camille Kingsolver graduated from Duke University in 2009 and currently works in the mental health field. She is an active advocate for the local-food movement, doing public speaking for young adults of her own generation navigating food choices in a difficult economy. She lives in Asheville, N.C., and grows a vegetable garden in her front yard.
Steven L. Hopp was trained in life sciences and received his PhD from Indiana University. He has published papers in bioacoustics, ornithology, animal behavior and more recently in sustainable agriculture. He is the founder and director of the Meadowview Farmers Guild, a community development project that includes a local foods restaurant and general store that source their products locally. He teaches at Emory & Henry College in the Environmental Studies department. He coauthored Animal, Vegetable, Miracle with Barbara Kingsolver and Camille Kingsolver.
Product details
- ASIN : 0060852569
- Publisher : Harper Perennial; Reprint edition (April 29, 2008)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 400 pages
- ISBN-10 : 9780060852566
- ISBN-13 : 978-0060852566
- Lexile measure : 1160L
- Item Weight : 15.5 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.31 x 0.88 x 8 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #335,961 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #385 in Organic & Sustainable Gardening & Horticulture
- #387 in Culinary Biographies & Memoirs
- #10,790 in Memoirs (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Barbara Kingsolver grew up in rural Kentucky and earned degrees in biology from DePauw University and the University of Arizona before becoming a freelance writer and author. At various times in life she has lived in England, France, and the Canary Islands, and has worked in Europe, Africa, Asia, Mexico, and South America. She spent two decades in Tucson, Arizona, before moving to southwestern Virginia where she currently resides.
Her fifteen books include short stories, essay collections, poetry, and seven novels. In the first decade of the new millennium, following her well-known work The Poisonwood Bible, she published two novels (prior to this one) and three non-fiction books including Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, a narrative of her family’s locavore year that helped launch a modern transition in America’s food culture. Kingsolver’s work has been translated into more than two dozen languages, and has been adopted into the core literature curriculum in high schools and colleges throughout the nation.
Kingsolver was named one the most important writers of the 20th Century by Writers Digest. In 2000 she received the National Humanities Medal, our country’s highest honor for service through the arts. Critical acclaim for her books includes multiple awards from the American Booksellers Association and the American Library Association, among many others. The Poisonwood Bible was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the Orange Prize, and won the national book award of South Africa, before being named an Oprah Book Club selection. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle won numerous prizes including the James Beard award. The Lacuna won Britain’s prestigious Orange Prize for Fiction in 2010, and last year she was awarded the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for the body of her work.
In 1998, Kingsolver established the Bellwether Prize for fiction, the nation’s largest prize for an unpublished first novel, which has helped to establish the careers of more than a half dozen new literary voices. Through a recent agreement the prize has now become the PEN / Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction.
Barbara has two daughters, Camille and Lily. Her husband, Steven Hopp, teaches environmental studies. Since June 2004, Barbara and her family have lived on a farm in southern Appalachia, where they raise an extensive vegetable garden and Icelandic sheep.
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This book is several things, a memoir, a polemic, a sermon, and a call to locavorism. On a small Virginia farm a family decides to experiment for one year eating mostly homegrown and locally-grown food. The cast is acclaimed writer Barbara Kingsolver, who gardens and writes the narrative, professor-husband Steven Hopp, who is allowed in the kitchen to bake bread and writes sidebar essays, late-teen daughter Camille, who writes observations, pertinent recipes and meal plans, and nine-year-old Lily, an earnest poultry entrepreneur.
Kingsolver is an accomplished writer of mostly novels and is an alert and delightful wordsmith. In this nonfiction work, her writing is entertaining but lacks discipline; she bounces from object to subject like a child with too many toys. A chapter titled Molly Mooching (a Molly is a morel mushroom) provides history on the farm Steven bought some years ago, delivers an apologia for tobacco farmers, offers Appalachian flora trivia, takes us on a hunt for morels, puts potatoes and other early plantings in the ground, expounds on onions, interjects an essay by Steven titled Is Bigger Really Better? and concludes with Camille who writes Getting It While You Can, a teen's perspective on her mother's food plan and a recipe for Asparagus and Morel Bread Pudding. All of which is fun, disconcerting, and marginally useful.
In addition to politics and sermons, twenty chapters take us through planning, planting, preparing, eating and preserving. Titles include Springing Forward, The Birds and the Bees, Growing Trust: Mid-June, Eating Neighborly: Late June, Zucchini Larceny: July, and Life in a Red State: August, a double-entendre of tomatoes and more politics. For dessert we accompany Barbara and Steven on a two-week second honeymoon in Italy.
This book is a teaser. It titillates the reader with the benefits of home gardening but provides few gardening details; it teases with the compelling concept of locavorism but lacks inspiring success stories. Worst, it is naïve. Experienced gardener-writers like Eliot Coleman, author of Four-Season Harvest, know and show how to keep a garden going year-round. Kingsolver apparently feels that the gardening world dies in autumn and does not reappear until asparagus pops up in spring.
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is minimally useful as a reference book because, alas and inexplicably, there is no index. Thus, to remember the names of the six companies that control ninety-eight percent of the world's seeds, one must flip pages and hope for a lucky find. (It is in Chapter 3, titled Springing Forward.) You could write your own index. You could underline extensively and write key words at chapter beginnings. My messy alternative is to apply little sticky notes next to items I may wish to find again, so my copy now looks like a yellow-feathered flat bird.
Back matter includes a bibliography, a list of organizations, and sources for Steven's sidebar references. All of Camille's recipes may be found on the web site: [...] which has lots of photos. The site is a fun visit that puts a face on the people, the plants, and the animals.
I agree strongly with the locavore movement. The present food production system is a soil damaging, oil depleting, nutrition compromising scheme designed for corporate, not human health. For more on all that I recommend Michael Pollan's books: Omnivore's Dilemma, and, In Defense of Food.
Kingsolver has many fans so I hope that this book will create many converts to locavorism. But I'm skeptical, mindful of Steinbeck's admonition that, "No one wants advice, only corroboration." There is a plethora of advice in this book. But it will provide corroboration for those who are already concerned about the sad state of our food economy wherein any digestible item is supermarket available on every day of the year at great expenditure of oil and soil, at great reduction of flavor, at great loss to local communities and your checking account.
I have three pieces of advice for the Hoppsolvers (author construction): grow much more garlic, keep it in a cool place, not behind the kitchen stove, and, stop making your bread with flour that has been oxidizing since it was ground--grind wheat and other grains just before making your bread; it will be nutritionally superior and even more delicious.
In spite of being tossed from one subject to another time and again and learning almost nothing new about home food production, I enjoyed Kingsolver's range of interests and her entertaining writing. So here's a big thank you to all my homestead list friends who recommended that I read this book.
I gave my copy away and bought a new one for a Christmas gift. Now I have to buy a new one for myself.
Top reviews from other countries
It's organised seasonally, looking at the high's and low's of each month, and is written in narrative form. There are stories of buying chicks and baby turkeys, of planting seeds, of hunting for morels, of visiting other farmers and the region of Tuscany and what she learned from them, and -- what I found to be funniest of all -- how courgettes can overwhelm one's life.
Each chapter is punctuated by sidebars, one of which is written by her husband and usually considers a political issue like how patented seeds are expensive and can't be saved from one year to the next (and allegedly contaminate non-GM crops, thus putting organic growers out of business); the other is written by her older daughter, and includes recipes for the seasonally available crops for that month.
Not only was the book informative, inspiring, and eye-opening, it was also just a joy to read. The author, Barbara Kingsolver, is an excellent writer, filling her narrative with passages like this:
"I watched a few hundred gallons of Jersey milk throbbing and flowing upward through the maze of clear, flexible pipes like a creamy circulatory system."
Now about the available editions of the book. Originally, my friend loaned me the paperback, but I found the print to be uncomfortably small (it was all right with reading glasses, but harder with my varifocals).
Instead, I returned the paperback to her and bought a Kindle version for myself, because then I could alter the size of the type as I wanted. The downside with the Kindle edition is that the sidebars don't show up in an obvious way. I'll be reading along, then there will be some slight change of voice and focus, followed by the husband's name in small letters, and I realise I've been reading a sidebar for the last page or two. The paperback has the sidebars indicated in a much better way -- slightly grey background and boxed.
My preference would be for a paperback with larger print. There's so much referencing I'd like to do, and I just don't ever find the Kindle cuts it on that front. I guess, however, being a 384-page book already, they wouldn't want to make it any larger by altering the print size.
















