Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

A Year of Food Life

By: Barbara Kingsolver, Camille Kingsolver, Steven L. Hopp

Narrated by: Barbara Kingsolver, Camille Kingsolver, Steven L. Hopp

Length: 14 hrs and 35 mins

Publisher's summary

When Barbara Kingsolver and her family move from suburban Arizona to rural Appalachia, they take on a new challenge: to spend a year on a locally-produced diet, paying close attention to the provenance of all they consume.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle follows the family through the first year of their experiment. They find themselves eager to move away from the typical food scenario of American families: a refrigerator packed with processed, factory-farmed foods transported long distances using nonrenewable fuels. In their search for another way to eat and live, they begin to recover what Kingsolver considers our nation's lost appreciation for farms and the natural processes of food production. Americans spend less of their income on food than has any culture in the history of the world, but they pay dearly in other ways: losing the flavors, diversity, and creative food cultures of earlier times. The environmental costs are also high, and the nutritional sacrifice is undeniable: on our modern industrial food supply, Americans are now raising the first generation of children to have a shorter life expectancy than their parents.

Part memoir and part journalistic investigation, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle makes a passionate case for putting the kitchen back at the center of family life and diversified farms at the center of the American diet.

©2007 Barbara Kingsolver (P)2007 HarperCollins Publishers

Critic reviews

"Kingsolver has the ear of a journalist and the accuracy of a naturalist." (Publishers Weekly)

Enjoyable but troubling

I know this book was written a long time ago, but it glorifies a sort of libertarian ideal of independence and “self-reliance” without much interrogation of how this way of life came to be or what its implications are for others. For all the talk of symbiosis and the circle of life, the cottage-core thing is really all about disconnecting, isolating, and letting someone else deal with the struggle that ultimately sustains your bubble. Kingsolver poo-poos buying hamburger grown far away in terrible conditions…Ok. But buying local grass fed beef only creates a separate elite market—it doesn’t dismantle the existing one, and does NOT help the people who have no choice but to depend on the low-end mass market. People with privilege withdrawing and segregating themselves because they don’t like the icky poors’ way of living derails progress for everyone EXCEPT those who can afford and/or are allowed admission into the organic BPA-free clubhouse.

Good for a city slicker

Barbara Kingsolver does know how to tell a good story. She manages to turn what can be a very boring topic and makes it relatively interesting. For anyone who hasn't grown a large garden, eaten their own food, or know why asparagus isn't available in August, then this is a good book. She talks about why, when and how food is grown.

In the vein of making a good story she also anthromorphize all animals and plants. For example, the end story turns a large part on turkeys she is raising. Having raised the exact breed of turkeys she does perhaps gave me a little more insight. Her story is cute, but they aren't people. Applying human attributes to turkeys, or any animal, is annoying and not very helpful. They will squat or want to mate with a towel on a stick.

You also have to be careful. She wants to return her turkeys to a more "natural" animal that can raise their young and help the breed survive. This desire may kill the breed. Bourbon Red Turkeys have never lived on their own, they are a commercial breed developed in the 1900 and raised for meat. If you want to save the breed you need people to buy the meat, which then encourages people to raise the breed to meet the demand. This means it has to be affordable. Having birds sit on their own eggs and raise the breed means a female may raise 6 or 7 birds a year. They can produce up to 50 eggs/year, artificially incubated that's 50 turkeys. Heritage turkeys are already expensive enough to raise and sell, you don't need to increase costs more. Over the last 100 years they almost died out since they have little economic value and are raised as a hobby. If we're not careful they will be lost forever.

Her parts of the book are mixed with commentary from her partner and daughter. She's pretty lose with the facts in the first place, but in these asides lack total balance or realism. They really do detract from the book.

Moan, moan, moan.

Yes, the world will soon have no more to give to mankind. Yes, it's wonderful that the author was able to live a year of sustainability. Thanks for alerting the rest of us to options to reduce our ever-destructive impact on the world. I am so glad that your turkeys now know how to mate. I am so sad that petroleum based transportation systems hold us all in their ghastly grip. Oh, for another era . . .

Great book, with a caveat

I really enjoyed listening to this book. As an avid gardener and a supporter of local farms for all of our meat and eggs, I related strongly with a lot of the narrative. Barbara Kingsolver has a beautiful turn of phrase, and it was lovely to hear her husband and daughter adding their perspectives, too. The only reservation I have in recommending this book is that there are elements which we would recognize today as fatphobic as well as scientifically inaccurate as we have learned more about discrepancies about how thin people and fat people are treated by doctors and how that impacts health. A good listen if you can get past that, but if you have a history of disordered eating I wouldn’t recommend it.

If you think her fiction is great...

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

I have already reccomended this to quite a few friends and hosted a book group to discuss it. I will continue bringing it to the attention of the many readers at my Library.

What did you like best about this story?

Barbara not only writes with wit and charm but narrates with soothing clarity and is incredibly easy on one's ears. The additional sections from her husband and eldest daughter are very well done, and have been bookmarked to refer to their statistics and wonderful recipes. If this book doesn't make you think about how you are living and what you are putting in your mouth, I don't believe you are really listening. If you have the slightest interest in food or gardening this is a must-listen. Non-fiction that reads like fiction is hard to find and their farm life and travels take me to a beautiful place full of sun and tomato leaves. It's realism does not leave me despondent. It is clear that if we try to eat seasonally and locally each of us can make a difference even if we don't aspire to do it perfectly. Contains very practical ideas and educates without lecturing.

Hopefully there will be a revised and updated edition or a sequel in five to ten years.

Have you listened to any of the narrators???s other performances before? How does this one compare?

no

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

I have never written a review before but this title demands it. If I could buy a copy for everyone I would. Thank you Ms. Kingsolver for doing such wonderful work with the book and the narration. It is such a joy.

Interesting

This book provided an opportunity for me to explore my interest in gardening, while creating very necessary discussions with friends and family about the food we eat.

Inspiring

Excellent read. I've been dreaming of growing everything my family eats for years. This book has helped me too refine that goal and to believe it's possible to eat locally and accomplish what I really want -- healthy foods that support my local economy.

Life changing read!

At a book exchange that I hosted during Christmas 2020, this book was gifted. Unfortunately, I was not the receiver. However, when the lucky person chose this book and opened it three out of the eight women present all said aloud, "oh! That book changed my life." So, a copy found its way to me asap. They spoke absolute truth!

Kingsolver has the most amazing writing voice and an even sweeter narrating voice for her audible version. She utilizes her gifts of story telling to share her family's journey on a year with local only foods. She massages the reader/listener with tender truths of vegetables, animals and the miracles of life and our creation like a farmer gently turns the soil of a garden to prepare it for the new season's seeds. Just as the story mesmerizes you into a world most likely far from your own, she, along with her husband and daughter, drop the heavy seeds of truth about how America's food industry's dignity has been unnaturally interrupted.

I am both highly inspired and forever changed just as my book exchange friends confessed they were.

Loved!

This book is like no other in conveying g the realities of living green. I laughed, cried and learned so much. Wonderful read!

Love Barbara Kingsolver... hate her reading voice

Would you consider the audio edition of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle to be better than the print version?

I have read all of Barbara Kingsolver's books multiple times, and have been a fan for years. I was really excited when I saw that she was reading her own books, and promptly downloaded a couple.

Unfortunately, I find her reading voice/rhythm unbearable. I never finished listening to either of her books that I purchase from Audible.

So. Buy her books, but skip the audiobooks.

Would you be willing to try another one of the narrators’s performances?

No-I couldn't stand listening to her. It was as though she was reading/speaking to a 5 year old or someone she thought was slow to understand.

Any additional comments?

But her books are great, so go forth and read them all!