Among Flowers

December 20, 2004
Novelist Kincaid tells of her journey into the foothills of the Himalayas in search of rare plants to bring home to her Vermont garden. Much of the book feels repetitive, in an almost meditative way, as the author uses plain yet lyrical language to record the quotidian details of life in the wilderness. For Kincaid, everything on this trip—eating, sleeping, bathing—requires more effort than usual and sometimes even instills anxiety. Kincaid's details of meals and sleepless nights do grow tedious, and it isn't clear if the author is glad she decided to accompany her botanist friends on their trek, considering the constant threat of leeches and, much worse, the not unlikely (as she portrays it) possibility of losing her life at the hands of anti-American Maoist guerrillas ("Nothing could be more disturbing than sleeping in a village under the control of people who may or may not let you live"). Kincaid's fear never abates: "At some point I stopped making a distinction between the Maoists and the leeches." Occasionally, however, she is overcome with the beauty of the night sky, pilgrim destinations such as a sacred lake in Topke Gola, or the abundant flora, particularly "rhododendrons that were not shrubs, but trees thirty feet tall." This book is as much about a place as it is about overcoming fears and embracing the unfamiliar. Photos.

January 15, 2005
Fans of the novelist ("Annie John") and "New Yorker" contributor will welcome her latest adventures, tracking down plants for her Vermont garden in the mountains and valleys of Nepal. Along the way, Kincaid meets a variety of characters as interesting as the exotic plants, ranging from her Sherpas to Maoist militants. However, serious horticulturalists seeking meaningful descriptions of the flora of the Himalayas will be disappointed, as Kincaid's account does not concern botanical discoveries. Instead, it is really a series of descriptions of her trials and tribulations up, down, and eventually up to a pass at the height of 15,600 feet. Readers will quickly tire of Kincaid's whining about seeing amazing plants (she will rattle off their Latin names as a tease), only to realize that they wouldn't grow in Vermont (where much of the state lies in hardiness zone 5). Frankly, we also could do without the author's repeated insights while peeing in the middle of the night, too. Readers interested in the botany of Nepal should turn to Roy Lancaster's "A Plantsman in Nepal "or Narayan P. Manandhar's "Plants and People of Nepal". Recommended for larger travel collections or where Kincaid's books are popular. -Edward J. Valauskas, Chicago Botanic Garden Lib.

Copyright 2005 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 15, 2004
Kincaid brings her uniquely heightened sensibility and remarkable ability to evoke with equal vividness both inner and outer worlds to a gripping and poetic account of a life-changing plant-hunting expedition in Nepal. Kincaid, whose earlier plant writings are found in " My Garden [Book]" (1999), hiked in the Himalaya in the company of American plantsman Daniel Hinkley, husband and wife botanists from Wales, Sherpas, a cook, and ornery porters. Preternaturally observant and piquantly candid, she has an extraordinary facility for capturing the moment; for describing how the sky seems domed at high altitudes; how delicious the simplest of food is when living outdoors; how she copes with the horror of a plague of leeches; how being among these mysterious mountains alters her sense of distance, time, life. To add to the physical arduousness and psychological demands of their long trek was the threat of Maoist guerillas, and Kincaid finds herself astonished by and grateful for everything. "Nothing was as I knew it to be," she writes, and that is the sign of a truly momentous journey.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2004, American Library Association.)