![]() ![]() ![]() The novel takes its title from Jakob Böhme's The Signature of All Things (1622), a work that enthrals Alma's dottily mystical husband, Ambrose Pike. When Alma takes off for Tahiti, she too sails in the aftermath of a failed marriage and to feed a gargantuan appetite for knowledge. Gilbert's bestselling memoir of her pilgrimage to Italy and India, Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything, followed her quest for wisdom after her divorce. Her story is a historical-fantastical jeu d'esprit, a feminist fable, a cabinet of curiosities, a scholarly romp. Alma will visit Tahiti and settle in Amsterdam. Two pages later Henry is off to Peru, and settles in Philadelphia. Picaresque in form, grotesque in characterisation and antic in disposition, The Signature of All Things whisks us through more than a century and from Kew to Hawaii, where Henry sees Captain Cook being clubbed to death. ![]()
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