Animal, Vegetable, Miracle- Book Review

The book is overdue as is the review, but it's already past my bedtime, so I'm going to have to keep this short and sweet.

I enjoyed Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, Barbara Kingsolver's lyrical tale of eating locally. It's well-written and engaging, and I warn you, after you read the book, you will suddenly be filled with the demented desire to make your own cheese.

It's a book I fully recommend. And yet ... yes, there is an "and yet."

And yet the book made me uneasy. The book begins as Kingsolver, her husband Steven L. Hopp, and her two daughters Camille and Lily decide to move away from Tucson, Arizona to make their permanent home in Appalachia. Once they're settled into their new home and farm, they embark on a year-long project to eat as locally as possible. The resulting story is sweet, profound, and just a tad too idyllic for my taste.

Because, frankly, running the farm, cooking from scratch, killing your chickens, and making your own pasta and cheese seems damn hard. I can't imagine the hours that must have gone into canning tomato sauce, drying fruit, and making sausage, not to mention the planting, weeding, and harvesting.

Kingsolver acknowledges that farming is hard work, and suggests that farmers should be paid more for such back-breaking work. While I'm on record saying that I can't in full conscience support higher food prices, I do agree with her that farmers should get paid more. Farming seems to be a never-ending fairly thankless job, and I have to admit, I am happy not to do it.

But oddly, Kingsolver never seems to fully acknowledge the hard work cooking entails, nor does she seem to think that cooking is a job that really deserves compensation. She writes:

"Cooking without remuneration" and "slaving over a hot stove" are activities separated mostly by a frame of mind. The distinction is crucial. Career women in many countries still routinely apply passion to their cooking, heading straight from work to the market to search out the freshest ingredients, feeding their loved ones with aplomb. (127)

I sort of get where she's trying to go with this here. I understand that she's trying to reframe cooking, so that we see it less as a housewifely duty, and more as a fulfilling, and pleasurable pursuit. But, man, it still bugs. Yes, I think cooking can be meaningful and fun. Yes, I think you can be a liberated feminist, and still cook a delicious meal for your man. Yes, I think there are plenty of people, men and women included, who simply enjoy cooking as a hobby.

But not everyone is like that. I enjoy good food, I enjoy complicated cuisine, and I love tasting new dishes. But I'm a reluctant cook. I always have been a fairly reluctant cook, and I suspect, to a certain extent, I always will. Cooking for me is a novelty that's enjoyable on occasion, but on a daily basis becomes drudgery. But Kingsolver never seems to understand that not everyone achieves the level of self-gratification that she receives from cooking.

It frustrates me when she writes, "We gave up the aroma of warm bread rising, the measured pace of nurturing routines, the creative task of molding our families' tastes and zest for life; we received in exchange the minivan and the Lunchable." (127) Because personally, I must admit that I receive more satisfaction in the workplace than I do in the kitchen. I concede completely that not everyone has the same experience, but to reduce the successful, enjoyable careers many women have to "the minivan and the Lunchable" seems rather unfair. (And really, does Kingsolver, celebrated author, feel the same way? Or does she not, simply because as an author who can work from home, she neither had to give up the bread rising nor the meaningful paid work?)

I appreciate that Kingsolver attempts to dispel some of the myths of the rural American South, and I admit that I know very little about the area or the people. Still, she doesn't particularly endear me to rural life with her explanation that country folk tend to view people as either "insiders" or "outsiders." She writes:

I am blessed with an ancestor who was the physician in this county from about 1910 into the 1940s ... But even a criminal ancestor will get you insider status, among the forgiving. Not so lucky are those who move here with no identifiable family ties. Such a dark horse is likely to remain "the new fellow" for the rest of his natural life, even if he arrived in his prime and lives to be a hundred. (209)

Well! How very comforting and amusing! Except when your parents arrived in this country in the 1970s and there is not a chance in hell that any of your ancestors, former convicts and all, ever stepped foot in the rural South. But hey, at least any "outsider" to the American South would get the same treatment, including a Bostonian whose family had lived in Massachusetts for generations. See, that's TOTALLY not racist or xenophobic!! Awesome. I feel better already.

Heh. I don't mean to rag on Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. It's a book well worth reading, and at the very least, Kingsolver definitely makes you think about your food and where it came from, which is always a worthwhile pursuit. In fact, when you come down to it, I think Kingsolver and I agree more than we disagree. I believe food is important. I believe good food is worth the money. I believe we should know more about how and where our food is grown. And hell, I think everyone should know how to cook, even if they don't enjoy it. In the essentials, I believe in the same things as Kingsolver.

But I can't quite shake the feeling somehow, that Kingsolver's idyllic America is one to which I don't have complete access. And so, as much as I enjoyed Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, I can't quite join the club of those who loved it without reservation. I guess I'm okay being an outsider on this after all.