A fresh take on George Orwell as an avid gardener

“Orwell’s Roses,” by Rebecca Solnit (Viking)

Weeks after Donald Trump was elected president, George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984” shot to the top of bestseller lists. Suddenly, it seemed, readers wanted to reacquaint themselves with a world in which “war is peace” and “two plus two equals five.”

That historical moment was not the impetus for Rebecca Solnit’s invigorating new book, “Orwell’s Roses,” although she briefly touches on the Orwellian dimensions of the last administration. Instead, it grew out of a casual conversation with a friend about a newspaper column Orwell wrote in 1946 about the fruit trees and rosebushes he planted around his rural cottage outside London.

Soon Solnit and her friend were on the internet, trying to find out if they were still there. That, in turn, led to a visit to the cottage, where Solnit found out that while the trees were gone, the roses were thriving, decades after Orwell’s death.

The discovery “filled me with joyous exaltation,” she writes, as did “the fact that this man most famous for his prescient scrutiny of totalitarianism and propaganda” was an avid gardener. It also sent her back to his novels and essays, making her realize that all his writing, even the most political, is suffused with a passion for the natural world.

At times her digressions and literary flourishes are maddening, but she always returns to the startling brilliance and clarity of Orwell’s work. She ends with a sensitive reconsideration of “1984” that, if you haven’t done so already, will make you want to reread it, too.