I was attracted by the reference to gardening and I discovered a book that starts as an exploration of Orwell and gardening but it's more complex.
I learned a lot, it's full of food for thought and kept me turning pages.
It's an enjoyable book as the author is a good storyteller but it's also a book that can challenging at times.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

This is another of those special non-fiction books by Rebecca Solnit - in the tradition of Bruce Chatwin, Sven Lindqvist, and Robert MacFarlane - that takes an interesting central theme, in this case, the author’s journey to discover the rose garden planted by Eric Blair (George Orwell) at his Wallington cottage in the late 1930s, which is then wrapped in a network of informative, related stories - or forays as Solnit refers to them: forays which like much of Orwell’s work includes the environment, evolution, social justice, history, and life.
At its heart, the book is about contradictions - who knew Orwell was so interested in gardening? It’s a fascinating study of life and death, joy and pain, truth and lies, beauty and ugliness. All in all, it’s a page-turner that kept me interested and informed from cover to cover.

Such a beautiful collection of essays by the wonderful Rebecca Solnit. It is not a regular biography of Orwell but uses a lot of his life to examine various topics - totalitarianism, exploitation, capitalism, writing, gardening... I found it moving, well-documented, clear - her writing is, as always, precise but warm, analytic but full of empathy... It is enjoyable even to someone like me - a casual reader of Orwell - and it makes subtle connections with current events. It was beautiful and enjoyable.

In her latest book of essays, Rebecca Solnit takes inspiration from George Orwell’s love of gardening, in particular the roses he planted in 1936 while living in Hertfordshire, still growing on her visit seven decades later. This less known aspect of Orwell’s life takes Solnit on a meandering exploration of Orwell’s life and writing, totalitarianism, tyranny, colonialism, social injustice and social change, political engagement, consumerism, nature, and beauty. It is an unexpected, thoughtful and stimulating book that I enjoyed very much.

I particularly liked the way Solnit makes connections. From Stalin’s obsession with making lemons grow in a cold climate and the plight of Colombian workers supplying cut flowers for export to the US, to Tina Modotti’s photographs of roses and Jamaica Kincaid’s writing. I also liked her exploration of how to live a ‘good life’ (although she doesn’t explicitly say so) or rather how to unify living a life with purpose, caring about truth, justice and human rights with a life of pleasure, that is hours spent with no quantifiable practical result in contemplation or experience of beauty, art and nature. Solnit’s meanderings take her to a new insight and appreciation of 1984, while the book has given me a new appreciation for her wonderful and unique mind.

Highly recommended. My thanks to Granta and Netgalley for the opportunity to read Orwell’s Roses.

Rebecca Solint takes us on a trip through Orwells world.Her essays drew me in from his garden to his politics she weaves a web through his life.Her essays are always so well written revealing lyrical.Once againI will be recommending this book .#netgalley #granatabooks

Is there a bibliophile around today who doesn’t admire Orwell’s writing? Either because they love it, or it aids their own reading and writing experience, or it makes them think of things bigger than themselves? Orwell is a much loved author, but this isn’t just another straight forward biography. It is so much more than that. Instead, it is a series of essays, combine Orwell and Solnit’s writing, stemmed from Orwell’s love of gardening - a pleasant activity one wouldn’t necessarily link to the brain who came up with Animal Farm and 1984.

There are some really lovely photo his book that make Orwell seem so…well…normal. Regardless of his opinions, for the majority of his life, he was just like any other young man living through the wars, these photos show there wasn’t necessarily anything obviously special about him.

I didn’t realise just how beautifully things like trees and plants can be written about before this. You get a new appreciation of plant life and what it means to us as a race. It is clear how gardening and Roses have entwined with his experiences with war, politics, mining, and of course, his writing.

You can tell how Orwell’s musings on Roses influenced his popular works, and Solnit adds a perfect amount of commentary, background information, and personal views to compliment his work. You can clearly see her passion when it comes to Orwell’s passion. It does stray to the outskirts of repetitiveness at times, but it never fully goes there, which is a talent on Solnit’s part to sustain such a heavy interest.

This is a relatively short book at just over 270 pages, but it is full of lovely description that brings a more human element to the excellent author, the same as his brilliance adds to him as a humble gardener.

"In the spring of 1936 a writer planted roses." Rebecca Solnit uses this statement as the jumping-off point for an extraordinary book about George Orwell and what his planting of roses means. This is not a biography of Orwell, though within a relatively slender volume Solnit covers huge swathes of his life - including the writing of The Road to Wigan Pier, his experiences during the Spanish Civil War and the writing of Nineteen Eighty Four - illuminatingly and authoritatively. She is prepared to look much further than the immediate circumstances of Orwell's life, however, ranging from the Carboniferous period to the photography of Tina Modotti, and she is fiercely engaged with questions of ecology, equality and social justice.

This may all round rather daunting but in fact this is an immensely readable book - Solnit discusses every topic she discusses with tremendous clarity and wisdom, and somehow makes them part of a unified argument. Orwell is her inspiration here, both his "relentless scrutiny of the monstrosities and underlying dangers in the present and the future", but, equally importantly, "the things he valued and desired, and his valuation of desire itself, and pleasure and joy, and his recognition that these can be forces of opposition to the authoritarian state and its soul-destroying intrusions." Orwell's home and garden in Wallington, Hertfordshire is crucial to the latter, though often overlooked by biographers, and Solnit argues that this aspect of Orwell's life is key to a full understanding of the man and his work.

Solnit does not flinch from the monstrosities of our own time, and partly as a homage to Orwell's journey to the industrial north, she travels to Colombia to observe the working conditions for those employed in the floral industry. This is probably the most harrowing section of Solnit's book, but she finishes with a re-reading of Nineteen Eighty-Four in which she observes "how much lushness and beauty and pleasure" there is in the novel: "they're endangered, furtive, corrupted but they exist." I loved these observations and they have made me keen to re-read the novel too.

Rebecca Solnit is an author I have been meaning to read for a while, and this deeply moving and insightful book has definitely convinced be to look out more of her work. No particular interest in Orwell is required to appreciate this book, just a willingness to make connections between different aspects of the world in which we live. Many thanks to NetGalley and Granta for sending me an uncorrected proof for an honest review.

‘Outside my work the thing I care most about is gardening' wrote George Orwell in 1940. Inspired by her encounter with the surviving roses that Orwell planted in his cottage in Hertfordshire, Rebecca Solnit explores how his involvement with plants, particularly flowers, illuminates his other commitments as a writer and antifascist and the intertwined politics of nature and power. She states the book is not a biography as there have been plenty of these written, however she intertwines events in his live and the influence these had on his writing to strengthen her arguments throughout the book. Orwell wrote The Road to Wigan Pier after his journey to the coal mines of England where he saw the injustice of working conditions on the working class. Homage to Catalonia is his personal account of his experiences and observations during the Spanish Civil War. The author encounters a more hopeful Orwell, whose love of nature pulses through his work and actions. In her writing she makes fascinating forays into colonial legacies in the flower garden, discovers photographer Tina Modotti's roses, reveals Stalin's obsession with growing lemons in impossibly cold conditions and exposes the brutal rose industry in Colombia.
The book gives an insight into the times and troubles which Orwell encountered. It is an interesting read which blends history and horticulture into an account of a writer who, through his criticism of society and his opposition to totalitarianism.

“So long as I remain alive and well I shall continue to feel strongly about prose style, to love the surface of the earth, and to take pleasure in solid objects, and scraps of useless information.”
– George Orwell

Gardening’s an act of faith, a gesture of hope in the future that vegetables we plant will grow, that seeds will sprout and someday flowers will burst forth in a riot of colour and scent. By focusing on George Orwell’s love of gardens, his carefully nurtured roses, Rebecca Solnit’s highlighting an aspect of Orwell that’s often overlooked. An Orwell who found joy, or reasons for optimism, in small things and in connection with nature, contradicting the popular image of someone essentially earnest or solemn. Solnit’s riveting study of Orwell’s an unconventional one, moving away from standard academic appraisals or linear biography. Instead, she plays to her strengths here, looking at her subject from a variety of angles, spinning out through an array of ideas, associations and, apparent digressions, inspired by her initial reflections on Orwell’s roses.

Roses lead Solnit to an iconic photograph by Tina Modotti who later renounced art as a bourgeois distraction from political activism. Modotti’s attitude’s not one Orwell shared. He writes about taking pleasure in a blackbird’s song or a view of a blossoming tree, all the things that reminded him of what made life worthwhile. This divide between politics and culture’s central to Solnit’s discussion. She searches out passages in Orwell’s writing that counter a belief that serious political engagement leaves no space for art or literature or that these are no more than frivolous diversions. Like Orwell, Solnit sees an activity like raising roses as a way to regenerate, to think about what it is that she values. But Orwell didn’t celebrate nature in an unthinking way and neither does Solnit. A portrait of Orwell’s ancestor on his rolling acres of land sparks a discussion of how representations of nature can disguise harsher realities – a reliance on slavery that paid for the portrait and the land it depicts. Solnit’s visit to a Columbian rose farm exposes a similar attempt at
masking truths, one that allows us to buy roses on Valentine’s Day without any sense of the conditions they’re grown in or the treatment of the workers who grew them. Solnit relates these examples to Orwell’s broader interest in the manipulation of reality: Winston’s world in 1984, Stalin’s lies and omissions, political lies and lying politicians.

I’ve read some of Orwell’s fiction and dipped into his other writings but I don’t have a particular interest in him or his life. Despite this, I found Solnit’s treatment of Orwell utterly compelling. It’s never less than thought-provoking but it’s also entertaining and accessible, admirably disciplined and beautifully-written. I’m sure if I picked at it there are places where it might unravel: some areas are touched on a little too briefly, some threads are a little too loose. But I’m not sure that that matters, I think Solnit’s aim is to share her perspective on Orwell, to examine what he represents for her. She’s trying to set off chains of associations in her readers rather than present them with an exhaustive or settled account. And this is far from settled, it’s a journey not a final destination, a conversation not a lecture, a restless, probing, skilful mix of analytical and deeply personal.

Many thanks to Netgalley and to Granta Publications for an arc

Expecting a book focused mainly on Orwell's life and works, I very much enjoyed Solnit's digressive approach to her central subject. Of course this book is about Orwell and about understanding the work and legacy of a writer that has often been misinterpreted to suit various political leanings. But it is also so much more. Orwell's love for gardening and roses – an interesting approach in itself, as it doesn't fit the image of the austere political writer many people picture when thinking of Orwell – constitutes for Rebecca Solnit a pretext to explore issues as varied as climate change, the working conditions in Columbian roses factories, British imperialism, Stalinism, language and aesthetics among many others. It is a magnificently researched piece of writing (especially considering it was written during the Covid-19 pandemic and its closed libraries). Living on the Isle of Islay, the neighbouring island of Jura, where Orwell wrote 1984 from the farm he rented in Barnhill, Solnit's portrait of this great writer matches the image I (and many other people around these parts) have of Orwell: a man not only interested in abstract ideas – as important as they may be – but also a man in awe with nature and the land, as we all should be. Rebecca Solnit's tour de force with this book is to show that both these aspects of Orwell's personality are far from antithetical.

A beautiful literary love letter to, and exploration of the works of, a fellow political essayist.
Solnit takes the reader on a journey to discover her joy in reading George Orwell’s essay about planting roses, and why this is not trivial, but core to both Orwell’s pursuit of truth saying and the reader’s political being.

Easily readable but meandering essays combine the literary and personal, using, as a starting point, Orwell’s essays about planting rose bushes and fruit trees. Having read these essays about 35 years ago, and also fondly remembering them, I was captivated by this book. Solnit says at the end of her introductory essay:<i>
I had not thought hard enough about those roses I had first read about more than a third of a century before. They were roses, and they were saboteurs of my own long acceptance of a conventional version of Orwell and invitations to dig deeper. They were questions about who he was and who we were and where pleasure and beauty and hours with no quantifiable practical result fit into the life of someone, perhaps of anyone, who also cared about justice and truth and human rights and how to change the world.</i>

Solnit examines Orwell’s love of gardening, which he expanded to what in England we would call a smallholding, to postulate how it underpins his politics, as an “Anarchist Tory”. She references Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier to consider his concern for the working poor, but also from a contemporary standpoint linking it to the industrial revolution’s ecological degradation. His Homage to Catalonia recounts, as an active participant his putting his political beliefs into practice, but also allowed him to “find a set of possibilities and ideals”.

Solnit initially digresses in her Roses and Revolution essay, which considers a photograph of roses from 1924 by Tina Modotti, to write about various aspects of roses, including a little repetition of observations made earlier in the book. However, Solnit builds and builds comment and analysis on slavery, colonialism, opium and the British Empire up from Orwell’s essay about roses, linking it to Orwell’s experience in Burma and his gentleman ancestors, before returning to Orwell’s roses again to enlarge her argument.

Solnit expands upon gardening to discuss eighteenth century landscape garden, and whilst reading this book, I visited Stowe landscape gardens in Buckinghamshire. I walked around the gardens for hours, admiring the beautifully fashioned and maintained man-made landscapes, embellished with statues, columns, temples, fanes, caves, cascades and bridges to create points of interest and views. I enjoyed the experience of being in an idealised natural world (complete with ha-has to allow the view to extend for miles without the interruption of fences). But I could also wonder about the source of the wealth/oppression that made this beauty possible.

I have read a lot of Joan Didion’s books in the last couple of years, and in this book Solnit creates a similar tight focus on a subject by approaching it in multiple and sometimes oblique ways, and also by including reportage (for example, about the Colombian rose growing business), writing as an observer (although not as personal as Didion).

Solnit completes our journey with consideration of Orwell’s late essays, Animal Farm, diaries and Nineteen Eighty-Four, but does so always returning to the context of Orwell’s joy from the small pleasures and beauty and hours with no quantifiable practical results. A wonderful book which definitely benefits from familiarity with Orwell’s work.

This is a peripatetic excursion around Orwell that takes off in all kinds of directions both political and linked to trees and flowers. As ever, Solnit is engaging, thoughtful, and just so interesting - almost like having a meandering conversation with your cleverest friend. She moves from personal anecdote to biographical information, but always from a perspective of social (in)justice.

As Solnit states in the opening pages, this is not a straightforward biography of Orwell. Instead, it's a meandering collection of essays that take Orwell's life - or rather, one moment in Orwell's life - as a doorway opening out onto reflections on nature, politics, art and truth.

It's also a celebration of essay writing as an art form, and of the multitudinal journeys you can take from any one start point. There is not really any better way to explore Orwell's world than through the form he dedicated much of his writing life to.

As with all of Solnit's writing, Orwell's Roses is a thoughtful and thought-provoking rumination on a theme that takes you far beyond the bounds of what you were expecting.

I love everything Rebecca Solnit has written. I am also a massive Orwell nerd. So when I saw this book, by one of my favourite writers about another of my favourite writers, my head almost exploded. Its probably the book I have been most excited to read, possibly ever. And it didnt let me down.
If you have read Solnit you know that her books tend to roam and range over lots of topics while being about one thing. If that makes sense. This book is about the roses that George Orwell planted in his garden in 1936, that Solnit travelled to and saw were still growing. Out of this experience she has crafted a book about nature, roses, war, love, death, writing, illness, beauty, hope and so much more. Its difficult to describe but trust me when I say if you have any interest in Orwell this is an essential read. It is not a straight forward biography by any means, but essential nonetheless. And even if you have never read Orwell this is still a beautifully written book that speaks about so much, and might convince you to pick up one of his books.

A unique mix of biography, journalism, politics and nature writing, this is a very thought-provoking book. I found the content repetitive sometimes and the writing style was occasionally dry, but I appreciated having a new perspective on George Orwell, the context in which he wrote and how his work resonates today.

Rebecca Solnit visits the cottage in Wallington where Orwell used to live and where he cultivated roses, along with many other plants. She explores what the garden and the outdoors meant to him, finding evidence in his writing, particularly Nineteen Eighty-Four. The biographical element is generally linear, with many discussions in between which aren’t necessarily about Orwell or roses but are linked to them. Topics include the disconnect between the consumers and the producers (including a visit to a rose bouquet factory in Colombia where there is more ugliness than beauty), climate change, colonialism, slavery and Stalinist Russia. With such heavy themes, it’s a book to weigh upon your conscience as you ponder all the dreadful things humanity is responsible for. Orwell was ill for much of his life and also injured in the Spanish Civil War but he pushed himself hard to take part, write prolifically and tend his garden. The book ends, somewhat unexpectedly, with a look at the River Orwell, which inspired his pen name.

Thank you to the publisher Granta for the advance review copy via NetGalley.

[Note - this review will be on my blog, 5th October 2021]