"Wise, funny, touching, wide-ranging, deep-delving; whip-smart
dialogue and graceful, paced sentences, thousands upon thousands of
them. Written by a novelist with the eye of a poet, and a poet with the
narrative powers of a novelist, this is a book that needed to be
written, that tells true things, and is entirely its own being."--Robert
Macfarlane, author of The Lost Words and Underland
One of the most acclaimed and revered writers of her generation
returns with her most ambitious novel yet--an elegant, multi-layered
work, rich in imagination and exquisitely told, that interweaves a
quartet of journeys across continents and centuries.
As emotionally resonant as Kiran Desai's The Inheritance of Loss, as
inspired as Anthony Doerr's Cloud Cuckoo Land, as inventive as Louisa
Hall's Speak, and as visionary as David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas,
Everything the Light Touches is Janice Pariat's magnificent epic of
travelers, of discovery, of time, of science, of human connection, and
of the impermanent nature of the universe and life itself--a bold and
brilliant saga that unfolds through the adventures and experiences of
four intriguing characters.
Shai is a young woman in modern India. Lost and drifting, she travels to
her country's Northeast and rediscovers, through her encounters with
indigenous communities, ways of being that realign and renew her.
Evelyn is a student of science in Edwardian England. Inspired by
Goethe's botanical writings, she leaves Cambridge on a quest to wander
the sacred forests of the Lower Himalayas.
Linnaeus, a botanist and taxonomist who famously declared "God creates;
Linnaeus organizes," sets off on an expedition to an unfamiliar world,
the far reaches of Lapland in 1732.
Goethe is a philosopher, writer, and one of the greatest minds of his
age. While traveling through Italy in the 1780s, he formulates his ideas
for "The Metamorphosis of Plants," a little-known, revelatory text that
challenges humankind's propensity to reduce plants--and the world--into
immutable parts.
Drawn richly from scientific and botanical ideas, Everything the Light
Touches is a swirl of ever-expanding themes: the contrasts between
modern India and its colonial past, urban and rural life, capitalism and
centuries-old traditions of generosity and gratitude, script and "song
and stone." Pulsating at its center is the dichotomy between different
ways of seeing, those that fix and categorize and those that free and
unify. Pariat questions the imposition of fixity--of our obsession to
place permanence on plants, people, stories, knowledge, land--where
there is only movement, fluidity, and constant transformation. "To be
still," says a character in the book, "is to be without life."
Everything the Light Touches brings together, with startling and
playful novelty, people and places that seem, at first, removed from
each other in time and place. Yet as it artfully reveals, all is
resonance; all is connection.
