Natives and Exotics

Jane Alison is a fine writer who meticulously researches her material, and it shows. A most enjoyable book, especially for those who love to read about the natural world and about places faraway in terms of time and geography. Highly recommended.

It is 1786, and in London, acclaimed botanist Sir Joseph Banks inspects the wonders of his journeying and decides what should go where in the world - "because there is no reason to let things stay as they were, after all." Exploration precedes colonization and colonization precedes trade and "that is the natural order of things." In the Atlantic in 1799, German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt lands in Spanish America and reflects that man is not master in the Tropics, "but instead a transient guest, wise to enjoy the fruits that are offered." Jane Alison's Natives and Exotics is all about this nature of belonging. We are implicitly imbedded with the land, the seas, the skies, and the sacred heart of the earth, but as explorers discover new worlds and as the continents drift forever closer together, the earth is ever more becoming a single, defining entity, no longer made up of any number of separate, discrete places. Effortlessly switching backwards and forwards through time, Natives and Exotics charts those individuals - including a famous botanist in the early 19th century and a global traveling senior citizen in the late 20th century - who are inevitably on the move, traveling from continent to continent in a world undergoing intense, social, political, and economic change. Nine-year-old Alice Forder is the youngest member of the family that Alison chronicles back through the generations. Alice is an exotic herself, a child of the Foreign Service who is now stationed in Ecuador. Alice is Australian by birth, but she has moved around so much that now she's from nowhere in particular. On the tarmac at Adelaide airport while saying goodbye, Violet, her grandmother tells her, "no remember, and don't ever forget! You must always remember where you're from." As a bride, Violet moved with her husband from Adelaide, where they were teachers, to the Outback, where they became settlers, clearing the land of the vegetation that clings to it so obstinately. It is 1929 and even though she's a native Australian, Violet remains haunted by England, "pure England," a place she calls home. Meanwhile, her husband tells her that "it's nonsense this home business, a colonial affectation." Violet, however, refuses to be misled, as though there was a strip of time that was hers, and all the vast rest of it was not. When, at the end of the novel, she finally visits England on a senior citizen's holiday, its as though she'd finally come home and nobody has greeted her. As if after all the years of loyal imagining, there turned out to be no connection between this place and home. Perhaps Violet feels this way because she is a descendant of George Clarence, an early Australian settler and a gifted horticulturalist who fled first from Scotland, sailing to Saint Michael, a Portuguese Island in the Atlantic, and later from there to the Antipodes. He plants apples in Scotland and oranges in the Azores, but is never able to situate himself, and has trouble "belo

"Exotics," a term often used to describe plants living in non-native environments, also refers, in this novel, to the main characters, since all of them also live in foreign environments. The Forder family, in the first of three major story lines, is on assignment in Ecuador in 1970, where the father works for the US State Department. Rosalind Forder, the mother, and Alice, her daughter, are doubly displaced since they are originally from Australia. In the second story line, taking place in 1929, Violet Clarence (Rosalind's mother) is living in Australia, helping her husband Alf hack out a home in the bush. Because her family originally came from England, she has always regarded England as "home." Part III follows an earlier relative, a Mr. Clarence in 1822, as he is dispossessed of his land in Scotland and moves with his foster son George to St. Michael in the Portuguese Azores. In each of these three story lines, the "exotic" foreign residents permanently affect the environments in which they live--Mr. Forder by manipulating the fluid Ecuadorian political system so that American tuna companies can harvest at will in Ecuadorian waters; Violet and her husband through their work clearing land for farming and sheepherding; and Mr. Clarence and George through their importation to the Azores of exotic plants and new kinds of orange trees from around the world. Alison clearly believes that despoiling a natural environment by removing or adding new plants and/or animals is dangerous and often foolish, no matter how honorable the motives, and she is even clearer on the subject of colonialism, both the old colonialism of the British Empire and, as she sees it, the more recent colonialism of the US. Mr. Forder's notion that "[Development in Ecuador] is not a matter of right...it's a matter of responsibility," is shown to have permanent, ineradicable effects, both on the natural environment and on the local people who inhabit it. Alison never forgets that she is a novelist, however, and she never yields to polemics, softening her message through the love that some of the characters show for the environment and through sensuous, lyrical descriptions of immense beauty. Her depiction of geological eras and natural processes is so vivid the reader feels transported to a different world, making the contrasts effected by civilization more strongly felt. Her displaced characters and their difficulties in adapting to their lives humanize her themes, broaden her scope, and put man into a geological perspective--that of a relatively new but dangerous species which, one hopes, has the capacity to learn from experience. Mary Whipple

NATIVES AND EXOTICS by Jane Alison is a luscious book with phrasing so drop-dead gorgeous you have to stop and read it again to dwell on how right it is. The book is presented in sections, jumping across time and around the world with several members of one family. The author starts us off in 1786 in various locales and leaps ahead to about 1970 in Ecuador, then back to 1929 in Southern Australia, back further to 1822 in Scotland and the Portuguese Azores and then to 1981 in the United States. But somehow she manages not to get us lost. My favorite character is young Alice, born in Australia, who has traveled with her mother and her diplomat stepfather to Ecuador where, at 9 years old, she comes to "her fourth country, sixth city, seventh house." Alice is mesmerized by the lushness of Ecuador, and she marvels in the small details of life in another country - shopping for fruit, buying boots, everything becomes an adventure. It's fascinating to see what a child in that position finds interesting, and it all rings true because Jane Alison grew up in foreign service, so she is writing from what she knows. The author conveys Alice's excitement well: "All at once she was ripped open: all that light and color poured into her." The tone reminded me of "The Poisonwood Bible" by Barbara Kingsolver (which I highly recommend), as did some of the tropical descriptions and the perceptions of a traveling child who is coming of age. Amid recurring themes of earth and sea, plants and paradise, building and destroying, people ponder the awesome wonder and intense beauty in the earth and the horrors men do - even unwittingly - to each other, to the land, to animals and even to plants. Always there's talk of the earth, of mountains forming, of what's under the oceans, the discoveries of dinosaur bones and continental drift, the incomprehensible age of the earth. Curious people want to know how nature works. We meet a mariner who sailed the seas with Captain Cook, and several famous characters show up: Sir Joseph Banks, who sent people around the world to "discover and seize the world's living wealth" of botanical wonders; Charles Darwin on the HMS Beagle; and a young naturalist named Alexander von Humboldt who "wished to plumb the secret unities of nature -- to learn how living things gained a foothold on land, how land itself was created." Much of Alison's writing is like poetry, with impossible phrases that fit perfectly: "He had a tight, negotiating mouth." "So up Alice went, ... up the implausible stairs." Flags "slowly furled and unfurled against the primitive sky." Beautifully done.

Life goes on in a colonial city high in the Andes in the 1970's, regardless of military coup or Ecuadorian diplomatic tensions, the American Embassy overflowing with the usual parties and pulsing music. Nine-year old Alice Forder is torn open by the shocking beauty of the country, "all that light and color poured into her", mindful that all those who live within the embassy walls are guests in Ecuador, whether with the foreign service, USAID or with the oil companies laying pipeline. Yet everything is transitory, the lush beauty only hers to enjoy for a moment. In the mind of a nine-year old such a place is larger than life, exotic and impossible to capture for long. In her short time in Ecuador, Alice goes on a climbing excursion with a teacher and two other students, is taught the social pecking order of embassy children and camps in a tent on the beach with her mother a few weeks before the Forders are scheduled to move to another post. All too soon, the beauty of this haunting country is seen through the window of the airplane taking her away. In 1929, Vi Clarence is building a life in Australia with Alf, a rigorous life full of the satisfactions of hard work. Australia has only been settled for one hundred years and Vi is cognizant of the great breadth of this land, its potential and her family's future here. Pregnant with her first child, Vi is Alice Forder's grandmother, living out the rugged days of the early settlers: "She felt as if she kept flying free of her tether, or as if the center of things kept shifting"; she has to exert herself to stay fixed in one place. Suddenly she understands that "there was a thin strip of time belonging to her and the rest of it does not". Vi muses about her great grandfather's long journey from Scotland, a man who came to this land when it was first settled as a penal colony. Even earlier, in 1822, Violet's Scottish grandfather, George, endures the savagery of the Clearances, when homes are destroyed to empty the land for sheep, people pushed aside like so much refuse. Scots are shipped to North America, British convicts to New South Wales; ships wander the globe, carrying cargoes of people looking for a place to start over. Finally, landing in the Portuguese Azores, George is involved in the citrus trade on the island of Saint Michael. Deeply attuned to the planting in the orchards, George is designing a natural garden, dreaming of the island's promise, when political turmoil breaks out in the Portuguese ruling family. George understands that now there will be war, there is always war when empires are being forged from trade and opportunity. When the groves are destroyed by parasites, George moves on to southern Australia. Alison focuses on the human face of change, the individuals who value the fragile beauty of the earth, the vivid colors, the weight and texture of the soil, the promise of new growth. Going backwards in time, this elegant, intimate book possesses the air of discovery, whether th