All Over Creation

I read My Year of Meats several years ago and loved it. I wasn't sure if I would feel the same about All Over Creation. However, Ruth Ozeki has managed to write another brilliant, sensitive and well informed novel. The characters are deeply human - idealistic and flawed yet somehow lovable. Ozeki manages to enlighten and educate on the subject of factory farming and genetically modified organisms without sounding preachy or self righteous. I did not want this book to end!

I have fallen in love with, it seems, an unusual author. I found Ruth Ozeki's first novel, "My Year of Meats," when I was working at a little independent book store in Northern California. I read it on whim, and just absolutely fell in love with Ozeki's way of story-telling, her technique of uniquely blending Japanese and American cultures with agro-industry. A few years later, and I have just finished Ruth Ozeki's "All Over Creation". Once again, I was startled at how poetically she wove together a truly human story with a profound analysis of our carnivorous consumerist culture, and the side effects of this for farmers, children, etc. The profundity of her first novel rang true in her second. An Idaho farming family, genetically modified foods, and a hippie bunch...a strange setting for a novel? Absolutely. Heart-warming, well-crafted, and moving? Again, absolutely.Her works are just wonderful, very personal, very earthbound. Very highly recommended.

Ruth Ozeki has produced another iconoclastic, sardonic, and hair raising novel raising further awareness about corporate subversion of our food supply. While not as ambitious as her earlier "My Year of Meats", this novel spotlights the threats to our health and nature as a whole posed by the genetic engineering of food crops. While we knew that green crops such as celery and lettuce were full of pesticides, immediately after finishing this book, and before I'd had a chance to turn the first page, my wife committed to only buying organic potatoes. Living not far from the site of this fictional tale, and where most of the nation's potatoes are grown, I was even more engaged in the author's description of how the dwindling number of remaining small farmers are coerced by corporate agricultural practices -- and how their own health is compromised as an added result.Ozeki again proved able to weave an entertaining and touching tale interwining human nature and our food supply. She tells a poignant and touching story about the unpredictability of nature while simultaneously making you laugh out loud.While Ozeki's satirical style makes the situation sound far fetched, she is again absolutely on time, as confirmed in recent articles in "Harpers" and the "New York Times" have confirmed. There is a sound basis in fear underlying the strident opposition of the Europeans to genetically alerted crops besides a seemingly elitist aversion to the American largely convenience food diet. Ozeki accurately represents how genetic modification of the agriculture is a critical threat to the world's health supply as a whole. Unfortunately, the actual outcome is less likely to be as upbeat as the novel's end.

Genetically Engineered potatoes and a prodigal daughter are at the heart of the book ALL OVER CREATION, Ruth Ozeki's second novel. Yumi, or Yummy as she is called, is the daughter of Lloyd Fuller and his Japanese War-Bride Momoko, who settled in Idaho after the war growing potatoes and other crops to earn their living. Although the Fuller's are rather conservative people, their daughter Yummy grows up a little too wild for Lloyd's tastes. After a falling-out when Yummy is 14 years old, she runs away from home and does not set foot again on her parent's property until 25 years later, after she receives a call from her childhood bestfriend Cass, who asks Yummy to return home to her parents. Cass herself had been caring for the Fuller's at this point, since neither of them could take care of themselves. As Yummy deals with her feelings about her parents and her life as a whole, a group of protesters that call themselves THE SEEDS are slowly making their feelings known across the Midwest. They protest their sentiments against genetically engineered crops, in particular potatoes, and soon end up in Idaho and on the Fuller's farm. Their intention is to meet Lloyd, who they feel is their guru in the war against this unnatural vegetation that will eventually hurt the environment. The Seeds bond with Lloyd, and actually do him a bit of good, giving him a new lease on life. I highly enjoyed ALL OVER CREATION. Although the main themes about the environment are not typically what draws me to good fiction, I found that Ruth Ozeki did a great job with creating characters and situations that felt realistic to me. She successfully created a series of subplots that all fit together and fell into place quite logically. I also found her writing very easy to read, and I also learned something about the war on genetically engineered crops. I am looking forward to reading her other novel, MY YEAR OF MEATS.