An interesting and well written book, offering a new insight into Orwell.

Thank you to NetGalley and to the publisher for allowing me to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

This book explores George Orwell's background and inspiration. It starts with his love of gardening and goes on to cover politics, art, power, environment and social history.
A fascinating study of his life has been produced by Solnit.
My thanks go to the author, publisher and Netgalley for providing this arc in return for a honest review.

I was fascinated by the concept behind this one. “In the spring of 1936 a writer planted roses” is Solnit’s refrain; from there sprawls a book that’s somehow about everything: botany, geology, history, politics and war – as well as, of course, George Orwell’s life and works. On a trip to England with a friend who is a documentary filmmaker, Solnit had the impulse to go find what might be left of Orwell’s garden. When she arrived in the Hertfordshire village of Wallington, the current owners of his home kindly showed her round. His fruit trees had long since been cut down, but the rosebushes were still going strong some 80 years later.

This goes down as a skim for me: though I read the first 30%, after that I just browsed to the end. Some side tracks lost me, e.g. Tina Modotti’s presentation of roses in her photographs; Orwell’s interest in mining, which leads Solnit to investigate how coal is formed; much history; and a week spent observing the rose-growing industry in Colombia. I most enjoyed the book when it stayed close to Orwell’s biography and writings, positing gardening as his way of grounding his ideas in the domestic and practical. “Pursuits like that can bring you back to earth from the ether and the abstractions.” I also liked – briefly, at least – thinking about the metaphorical associations of roses, and flowers in general.

If you’ve read Solnit before, you’ll know that her prose is exquisite, but I think this was the stuff of a long article rather than a full book. As it is, it’s a pretty indulgent project.

Not really a biography but a book exploring George Orwell's background and inspiration. Starting from his love of gardening but encompassing a wide range of political and social history including climate change and the British Empire.

A marvellous and moving meditation on nature, politics, art, power and truth, seen through the lens of the life and work of one of the best political writers who ever lived. Orwell's work is prescient and timeless, and frankly has never been more relevant than it is now, and this excellent book proves it. I adored it!

Rebecca Solnit is a wonderful writer who opens my mind up to new ways of thinking and seeing the world, sometimes in how she writes and sometimes in what she writes about. In this book there is much reflection on George Orwell and not wishing to write a biography although she does explore his life, she uses his love of Roses as a starting point to look at him but also at nature and how roses have been used in art. A lovely gentle absorbing read.

With thanks to netgalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

It is a gentle, restful, altogether more hopeful view of Orwell that Solnit presents to us here, and her biography takes evident delight in breaking down the conventions of its genre. As she puts it, ‘Orwell’s life was notably episodic’, something she seeks to reflect in the structure of her own book, which adopts a roughly chronological approach to its subject’s life but is really ‘a series of forays from one starting point, that gesture whereby one writer planted several roses’. Thus we encounter biographical detail, passages of critical reading, eclectic information about roses and the role they play beyond blooming in cottage gardens, and episodes from Solnit’s own life: her travels in England (concise and well observed, if at times a little cloying; she is unfailingly charmed by everything), her discovery of Tina Modotti’s rose photographs, and a long diversion in which she makes a clandestine visit to the greenhouses of Bogotá.

[. . .]

As an introduction to the man born Eric Arthur Blair, Orwell’s Roses is an accessible and interesting work, yet its rambling structure and musing tone allow Solnit to pack in even more: it is also a meditation on small acts of resistance, on the beauty of the natural world (and, more depressingly, how humans try to exploit it), on ephemeral moments of happiness and how something seemingly insignificant can be the root of something much bigger. In tone and timing, it couldn’t be better – irrepressibly joyous, and filled with hope.

[excerpted from the full review published on my blog]

“In the year 1936, a writer planted roses.” So begins Rebecca Solnit’s latest book, and also other chapters that follow. It’s easy to think that this is a book about Orwell or roses, but there are more intriguing discussions on various topics that Rebecca presents to us, the readers. Rebecca takes us to see the other side of Orwell, that’s rarely discussed by scholars or literary critics. We know George Orwell as the nom de plume of Eric Arthur Blair, a British author who lived between 1903 and 1950 whose works are characterised by its opposition to totalitarianism as well as providing social critics of his time. But the period of Orwell’s life in 1936, a short period sandwiched between his life in Northern England when he wrote The Road to Wigan Pier and his heroic involvement in the Spanish Civil War that followed.

Between 1936 and 1940, Orwell lived in a small cottage at No 2 Kits Lane in a small village called Wallington, in the North Hertfordshire district, in the county of Hertfordshire, England. He had the lease until 1947, coming occasionally during weekends, even when he already moved to London. He had married his first wife Eileen O'Shaughnessy at the village church on 9 June 1936. At least three of his novels were drafted in parts while Orwell lived in this cottage. Now, what makes this cottage so special? Rebecca Solnit, partly fulfilling her curiosity and perhaps also as a way for her to make a pilgrimage to her favourite author, visited this cottage in Wallington. The cottage has changed a lot in the half-century that passed since Orwell lived there. Despite the changes that occurred, one thing remains the same. The roses that Orwell planted in 1936 still blooming in front of the cottage.

The roses are in some way, an allegory of nature, that nature will still remain even though humans have perished throughout the ages. Rebecca not only discusses roses in relation to what Orwell thought about it but also invites us to see how humans should renegotiate their position in the natural world. She visited the flower farms of Sunshine Bouquet in Bogota, one of the largest suppliers of flowers to the US, from which many fresh flowers find their way to Miami, especially during Valentine and Mother's Day. The people who buy those flowers might not have realised the farming condition that the farmers experienced, working for more than 100 hours per week with meagre incomes and little to no employee benefits. The modern world is a place where our necessities such as food, clothes, and other stuff are fulfilled easily, without us having any interaction with the people who created/processed them. In some ways, this is some kind of alienation from the communal life of pre-industrial society.

Rebecca attempts to show the readers her process of rediscovering new aspects inside Orwell’s works, particularly with his famous Nineteen Eighty-Four which was published shortly before his death. It’s easy to see Orwell’s magnum opus as a political novel, with Winston opposing Big Brother and attempting resistance through the act of writing a journal and committing several foul acts defying the totalitarian system. Yet Rebecca shows us that Orwell also has a side in which he incorporates his love of the natural world into his works, sometimes through his allegory or through his description of the environment. Rebecca notes that Orwell often wrote about plants and flowers in his journal, chronicling the process of growing plants and his observation that is not short of a botanist.

I think this is a highly intriguing book and I get why many people like it, especially those who are interested in making a pilgrimage to places where their favourite authors spent a considerable part of their lives. But Rebecca’s ideas are scattered and unfocused, which makes it quite difficult to follow her ideas at first. It takes a while to get used to her style of writing, especially since this is the first book by Rebecca that I’ve read. But the premise is interesting, Orwell’s fans will certainly like it and it might be worth it for those who need a guide to understand Orwell’s books, particularly Animal Farm and Nineteen-Eighty Four, as those two are the books which catapulted Orwell’s names as the leading opponent of totalitarianism.

This book is difficult to review, since I've already made up my mind to revisit it at some other time in the future.

The problem is that I genuinely enjoy Rebecca Solnit's writing. Her essays, her style, the way she words a fact...everything really, except this book. I cannot say that I've enjoyed the parts that I've read, the endless minutiae of George Orwell's gardening diary, the histories of roses and gardening, and the too many digressions from anything remotely connected to Orwell but might overlap for the love of roses,

Solnit's intention behind this book is clear and admirable: she wanted to explore Orwell's relationship with nature juxtaposed with his deeply political writing., which were the exciting bits in this book when presented. But the more background she tried to imbue her writing to serve this objective, the more discursive the topic became and the more the writing wandered off. There was a point in which I was actually skimming the pages for Orwell's name, because unlike any of her writing, this was a piece of research rather than a piece of literary presentation. A record of a sort rather than a quasi-biography. An amalgamation of tiny histories that crossed paths, in some sort of way, at one point or another, with a rose bush.

"He believed that paradise was behind us, in the old ways of life, and in the organic world, rather than ahead of us in an urbanized and industrialized future."

I liked this book, but I didn't love it. It was intriguing, well-written, and interesting but it just missed something for me.

O Solnit! O Orwell! O Rosa! I was bound to devour this…..

Orwell was a writer I discovered in my idealistic teens, and undoubtedly a writer who shaped my thinking – not just those later allegorical and warning novels, but, even more in those books where Orwell the man was learning and reflecting on his world. Homage to Catalonia, Down and Out in Paris and London, The Road to Wigan Pier, the journalistic and essay writings – all spoke to the idealism of my youth, and fostered and intensified something. Orwell’s refusal to follow isms, a sense of ‘decency’ , fairness, a willingness to understand the ‘walking in another’s shoes’ made – and still makes, to me – him a kind of role model

I have, also, had all my life a connection and need for the natural world, its mysteries and its teachings

And Solnit – here is a wonderfully eclectic writer who thinks and weaves, and feels, all around a subject, and connects it to other subjects.

She is as fierce and tender and luminous and illuminating a writer as her subject here.

So – she ably accompanies and explores Orwell as a thinker freed from ideologies, one whose radicalism can distangle inself from party lines, and she traces Eric Blair the man as well as George Orwell.

The root, the shoot, the flower of this book is the practical man, the day to day getting his hands dirty man. Not the intellectual in the ivory tower, but the man who wanted to experience the lives of others rather than be ‘the observer’. This man was also a passionate experiencer of the beauty of the natural world, . The hands that got dirty planted roses.

Solnit explores the myths and the realities of roses – then and now, in a way which echoes Orwell’s own writings which sought to reveal the injustices of class, by showing what lies beneath the privileged lives many of us in the developed world inhabit – all unaware of (or in denial about) how others may be exploited. One of the most sobering parts of this book, for me, was the section about intensive rose growing in South America, for the American market (Kenya performs the same pattern of exploitation for Europe’s benefit)

There are so many wonderful connections and strands to this sure-footed book, this journey (Solnit of course performed an equally skilful, eclectic feat in ‘A History of Walking)

I don’t wish to spoil any other reader’s delight in discovering topics and investigations they might meet, so will not name any other findings

A book to savour, treasure and slowly walk through.

Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher, and of course, Rebecca Solnit

I liked this book a lot but I didn't love it, so 4 stars. It's an interesting look at Orwell from an unfamiliar angle, which for me was good timing because I was also listening to Goodbye to Catalonia. At the beginning, Solnit comments on how non-fiction writing and essay form allows for meanders. The meanders here were perhaps a little disjointed, the thread of roses being a bit too contrived. But still a good read.

These essays emerge like the petals of a flower, clustered round a central stem of ideas, but opening out to embrace so much. From Orwell's life to the Bread and Roses movement to South American commercial rose growing, Solnit explores socialism, social justice and the growing of roses. It's wonderful to follow her thoughts and to read her lovely prose.

This is a great book. A reinvention of Orwell and a real eye opener for me. I loved him in my twenties and read almost everything he had written and then the phase passed and I moved on to other things. I was never tempted to revisit him until now, because his work was brilliant but brutal and I have had my fair share of brutal over the years. I didn't want more. Solnit has changed that. In a short essay he wrote about buying roses from Woolworths and planting them in his garden in Hertfordshire, she finds a different Orwell and spends the book tracking him down.

This Orwell is a lover of goats and fruit cake, of making gardens in the face of adversity, of ribald seaside postcards and giving small, orphaned boys a home. This Orwell knows things are terrible and continually steps up to face brutality, illness and death, but still makes time to carve out his little plot and grow things, to make soup and build the fire up and keep the cold out.

Solnit's reading of 1984 is a real eye opener here and I found myself yearning to read it again.

I also love the way she takes a circuitous route through all kinds of byways, circling back round to her central argument and taking in all kinds of observations and deviations along the way, creating a kind of patchwork quilt of journalism and enquiry. I loved it.

“Orwell is renowned for what he wrote against—authoritarianism and totalitarianism, the corruption of language and politics by lies and propaganda (and sloppiness), the erosion of the privacy that underlies liberty. From those forces, it’s possible to determine what he was for: equality and democracy, clarity of language and honesty of intentions, private life and all its pleasures and joys, the freedom and liberty that also depend to some extent on privacy from supervision and intrusion, and the pleasures of immediate experience.”

In this latest book of her essays, Rebecca Solnit shows us Orwell’s less familiar side, which she uncovers from his diaries and essays, an Englishman of yesterday who took pleasures in his simple homestead life, pastoral landscapes, and the beauty of nature, animals and flowers. He grew his own roses with meticulous and loving care, whose beauty inspired countless poets and painters throughout the centuries. The sheer enjoyment in their beauty and, more generally, intangible things as Orwell found in his cottage and countryside epitomizes the meaningful interior of one’s private life. Its meaning figures in the suffragist slogan “breads and roses” to which Solnit devotes one chapter and keeps turning to this central theme as she searches for an answer to how to make a good life as private individuals while, at the same time, conscientiously responding to larger social injustices, power corruption, and environmental destruction.

Through Orwell’s roses as a central metaphor, Solnit then directs us to their other side. Despite their beauty (“The beauty of flowers is not merely visual; it’s metaphysical…”), as everything else, the commercialized world has transformed them into quantifiable commodities. And, as everything else that is commodified, they can turn repulsively ugly with their unnatural looking bouquets masking over the hard labor in their mass production, as we learn from Solnit’s sobering account of her visit to the Colombian floral factory.

“Was the ugliness in the roses for being produced in such a way or in us for failing to see it? Had the roses become lies of a sort, seeming to be one thing but being in truth another? Were they now emblems of deceit, a kind of counterfeit rose signifying formal beauty rather than their own conditions of production? Much of Orwell’s work was about ugliness of various kinds, but what he found hideous serves as a negative image of what he found beautiful.”

Taking Orwell’s life and works as a point of departure, Solnit takes us into the multifaceted nature of these contradictions in today’s world, happening both somewhere there in modern versions of physical and ideological gulags and over here in our own lives disconnected from nature and the simplicity of meaningful life. It’s a superb homage from one essayist to another, who was her inspiration as her thoughtful and beautifully written book (though with occasional digressions and sometimes loose connections) should inspire any reader.

My thanks to Granta Publications for an ARC via NetGalley.

Did you know George Orwell was a keen gardener? I for one didn’t, having only read the quintessential Orwells (Animal Farm, 1984) during my poli-sci years. Rebecca Solnit’s not-quite biography of George Orwell and how his love of gardening and the natural world interwove with his writing is fresh and a joy to read, and encourages you to reacquaint yourself with Orwell’s works; or if you’re like me, encourages you to read more of George Orwell – and injecting into your reads a sense of optimism and hope.  

At the same time, this isn't just a book about seeing the beauty and joy in the everyday, Solnit reminds us this beauty and joy often come at a high price, highlighting the instances where the cultivation and acquisition of roses cause more harm than good. Her visit to a rose factory in Bogota, Colombia and her conversations with the workers there was illuminating, and opened my eyes to the exploitation occurring in the flower industry. Like Orwell, Solnit seeks to spotlight those harmed by rampant capitalism (well, industrialisation in Orwell's time) in this book.

All in all, this was enjoyable to read seeing as I'm unfamiliar with Orwell himself and now I have a new perspective on him.

It appears that George Orwell wasn’t just the incisive and perceptive political and social critic and novelist that we think we know, one of the most important writers and thinkers of the 20th century, but also a keen gardener, a lover of flowers and plants and vegetables, about which he was just as concerned as he was about the oppressed. Rebecca Solnit explores this aspect of Orwell with insight and nuance, opening up a whole new side of his character, thus informing our approach to him both as man and writer. But the book isn’t solely about Orwell. Solnit ranges far and wide. The book is also very much a personal odyssey, with many a side trip to Stalin’s purges, Mexico’s revolutions, the writing of Jamaica Kincaid and many more interesting byways. The result is an always surprising, original, engaging and thoroughly fascinating book full of new ideas, insights, digressions, trivia and leaps of imagination which I found compelling throughout.

Rebecca Solnit is masterful, and this book is no exception. As an activist and writer myself, I was keen to read Solnit's reflections on Orwell. I was absolutely fascinated by her thoughtful reflection and excellent research. She's just SO knowledgeable, and I loved how she wove her knowledge together to form this intricate and revealing tapestry of Orwell's work in context. Thank you for this ARC!

This book is a must read for anyone interested in George Orwell, gardening, nature, the environment, art, politics in fact a huge list of topics is covered by Solnit. Although I've read a lot of Orwell's writing I hadn't realised that he was such a keen gardener. Over the years various people have said that Orwell should never have been living on a Scottish island so I was very happy that the author pointed out that the clean air was much better for him than the London fogs would have been. I suspect he would have died much earlier if he had stayed in London. This is a very interesting read.
Many thanks to Granta Publications for sending me a digital copy of the book via NetGalley.

I have never read such an intellectual book about Roses. When I got into it, I was not at all prepared for the amount of information I am about to consume. Orwell's Roses is about Orwell and the roses but not exactly about them at the same time.

Divided into 7 parts, it feels like an ode to the writer himself. Despite the strong biographic mood, Orwell's Roses also deals with nature, politics, art and life of Orwell through his writings. Now, I haven't read anything that's written by Orwell but this book made me search for everything he wrote.

There's also this interesting tangent with Tina Modotti and Stalin's Lemons, but Solnit ultimately comes back to Orwell. Roses in this book is not just a flower but also a symbol for revolution, freedom and casual pleasures of life. I particularly enjoyed part 2 where she talks about the perils of coal mining. The Spanish Civil War part is also enlightening with so many new things that I was not aware of previously.

With that all said, I particularly like how Solnit didn't idealize the man. His shortcomings are also discussed with along with his deep roots in colonialism. I also like to note that as much as this book talks about the past, it does highlight the monstrosity of the present times too. And the finishing touch with a rereading of 1984 has increased my interest in the book.

I must be lying if I said that I totally enjoyed this book. There were some parts that dragged and I had to switch this for reading other books. and I found the pacing in the middle of the book a bit lagging for my taste. However, I must admit that I am new to reading essays and it might be something to do with me. Overall, I found this book thoroughly entertaining and informative. This is my first Solnit and I look forward to reading more of her.

Thank You, NetGalley and Granta for providing me with the ARC.