Claire Ratinon
Claire is a writer and organic food grower.
ANIMAL, VEGETABLE, MIRACLE : OUR YEAR
OF SEASONAL EATING by Barbara Kingsolver
Faber & Faber, £12.99, ISBN 978-0571233571
My RHS Level 2 Horticulture tutor recommended this book to me, and it was the first text I’d encountered that depicted the act of cultivating food and the edible growing season as a narrative. Best known for her novels, Kingsolver is a master storyteller and she skilfully recounts a year where she and her family attempted to live off the land, bar a handful of luxury items. By employing the most joyful prose, deft interrogation of the systems that feed us and a necessary acknowledgment of the dedication, skill and hard graft that goes into growing food, this book somehow manages to inspire while exploding romanticised notions of bucolic self-sufficiency with a hearty dose of realism. I’ve bought multiple copies of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle but I don’t own one now because I’ve given them all away to friends, urging them to read it whenever I can.
ROOTBOUND: REWILDING A LIFE by Alice Vincent
Canongate Books, £9.99, ISBN 978-1786897725
Rootbound is a book that tells the story of moving from heartbreak through healing and coming back around to love, all while discovering how the alchemy of growing plants can steady a wayward soul. This book deepened my appreciation for the green spaces of London – the city where I realised my foodgrowing ambitions – while offering snippets of botanical insight and gardening history, all woven through a very human, very heart-centred story. I read Rootbound at a time when I was coming to truly understand the intimacy I felt with the plants I nurtured. A time when I was beginning to write myself about the role growing had played in helping me see myself as a being who needs to deeply sense my connection to the natural world in order to feel whole. If Alice Vincent hadn’t written Rootbound, I’m quite certain I would never have found the courage to write my own story and, for that, I am eternally grateful that Rootbound exists.
Read a review of Claire’s new book, Unearthed, in the July issue.