The Lit List – a Literary Flora

Top 10: books celebrating plants and Spring

May is the festival of Flora, the Roman goddess of Spring and flowers. Accordingly, this month we dig deep into all things botanical with the best of fiction and non-fiction about gardening, plants, nature and plant-hunters.

1. Rappaccini’s Daughter by Nathaniel Hawthorne (Gothic fiction) A scientist plays God, hybridising his daughter with plant toxins to shield her from the outside world.
2. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnet (Children’s fiction) Orphaned Mary is restored by a hidden garden.
3. Bitter Orange by Claire Fuller (Literary fiction) Over the course of a long, hot summer, unworldly Frances develops an obsession with the dazzling couple downstairs.
4. The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert (Historical fiction) Alma’s thirst for knowledge and love leads to a voyage of discovery.
5. The Overstory by Richard Powers (Literary fiction) Ambitious eco-fable following nine (count ’em) protagonists.
6. The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafek (Literary fiction) Under the watchful gaze of a fig tree, Turkish Cypriot Defne and Greek Cypriot Kostas fall in love.
7. Sex, Botany and Empire by Patricia Fara (Non-fiction) The extraordinary history of plant-hunters.
8. The Seed Collectors by Scarlett Thomas (Literary fiction). Funny, philosophical saga of the Gardener family.
9. A Registry of My Passage upon the Earth by Daniel Mason (Short stories) A lyrical exploration of life on earth.
10. Ship Fever by Andrea Barrett (Short stories) A young doctor attends to refugees from the Irish potato famine, a woman refuses to pander to her brother’s inferior intellect and walks out of her life, plus the scientific giants of natural history, including Mendel, Linnaeus, Darwin and Wallace – all making discoveries of self and the world.

Bubbling under

• Unsettled Ground by Claire Fuller
• Greenwood by Michael Christie
• The Lost Rainforests of Britain by Guy Shrubsole (Non-fiction)

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