Orwell's Roses

Locations
Call Number: 921 Orwell, George, Adult Book / Nonfiction / Biography / Literary / Orwell, George
On Shelf At: Downtown Library

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	921 Orwell, George	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Malletts Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Nonfiction / Biography / Literary / Orwell, George	4-week checkout	Due 02-06-2025
Pittsfield Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Nonfiction / Biography / Literary / Orwell, George	4-week checkout	Due 02-08-2025
Westgate Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Nonfiction / Biography / Literary / Orwell, George	4-week checkout	Due 02-03-2025

"A fresh take on George Orwell as a far more nature-loving figure than is often portrayed, and a dazzlingly rich meditation on roses, gardens, and the value and use of beauty and pleasure in the face of brutality and horror. "In the spring of 1936 a man planted roses." That man was George Orwell, shortly before he went off to fight against fascism in Spain. Today, those rosebushes are still thriving. This is the starting point for Rebecca Solnit's new book, which presents another side of Orwell, a neglected arcadian Orwell who took enormous pleasure in the natural world and found great meaning and value in it. Orwell's planting of the roses is an axle from which Solnit's chapters radiate out like spokes as she brilliantly explores its various contexts, perspectives, and meanings, following the contours of Orwell's life and tracking how deeply enmeshed the love of nature is in all his writing. Journeying to the cottage in Wallingford where Orwell lived in 1936, she examines his desire to be agrarian and settled, how gardening restored him, and how planting something can be an act of fidelity and faith. Probing at the beauty and meaning of roses, she draws in the revolutionary photography and politics of Tina Modotti and makes a clandestine visit to a Columbian rose factory, where 80% of America's roses for sale are grown. She tracks the history of gardening, showing how the desire to garden is culturally determined and often rooted in class, recounts the immense battles over breeding and genetics in Russia during Stalin's time, and probes into the colonialist roots of Orwell's forebears, who worked in opium production in India and profiteered from sugar and slavery in Jamaica. Solnit shows how these points of intersection illuminate Orwell's work, and how that illumination shines forth on larger questions about beauty, pleasure, meaning, relationship, and hope. Her book establishes that "Orwellian" could stand for something more than ominous, corrupt, and sinister"-- Provided by publisher.

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COMMUNITY REVIEWS

Gorgeous and thoughtful writing submitted by severian on July 14, 2022, 7:41pm I loved this book, which is not really a biography about Orwell so much as it's an incredibly thoughtful dive into the nature of gardening vis-a-vis politics, the ongoing destruction of the planet, Orwell as a historical figure and his time period, fascism, capitalism, and the agency of any of us against these sort of unstoppable forces today. Solnit weaves all of this together in a wondrous and wandering sort of manner, not unlike the actual experience of wandering through a garden. It's great and well worth a read if you care about any of the above.