In the Corners of Clouds

Another Paradox… Ye Gods I love a big novel, one where you travel with somebody throughout their entire life, rejoice in their successes, weep for their losses, and come out the other side refreshed, inspired, awakened to your own life. The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert has been just such a book, fittingly finished on International Women’s Day as the protagonist, Alma, is my favourite kind of heroine – singular, real, flawed, deeply and beautifully human. Set in the 1800s, Alma has an insatiable curiosity about the natural world, but is only allowed to exist on the fringes of science, dabbling in one of the few areas open to women – polite botany (ugh) – her research recognized only when she disguises her gender. Her unmarried, childless state makes her an outlier, judged harshly, ridiculed. Her interests make her masculine, inappropriate, lesbian (she isn’t). She is not granted the freedom to thrive. A few years ago, I was playing a gig and a man in the audienc...