Synopses & Reviews
The quirkily titled
My Year of Meats took the literary community by storm, garnering widespread, glowing reviews, awards, and a still-growing readership for first-time author Ruth Ozeki.
Newsweek declared it "a feast that leaves you hungry for whatever Ozeki cooks up next." Well, hunger no more;
All Over Creation is served and Ozeki has laid out a four-star spread replete with humor, warmth, originality, and brilliantly drawn characters whom you'll never forget.
Meet Yumi Fuller. A Japanese American prodigal daughter, Yumi aka Yummy is returning home to the Idaho potato farm she ran away from twenty-five years earlier. Then a freewheeling hippie chick, Yumi is now a (semi) responsible parent and a professor with a side gig selling lava lots in Hawaii. But can she possibly be prepared to face her dying father, Alzheimer's-devastated mother, and Cass, the best friend she left behind? Not to mention a former lover whose agribusiness client has banished him to Idaho where he lands in the small-town community he once offended and in Yumi's life. As she grapples with her conflicted past and uncertain future, Yumi collides with the Seeds of Resistance, an eco-activist group with a knack for causing trouble wherever it plants itself.
With her signature wit and uncanny ability to evoke the pathos and humor of life's conundrums, Ozeki spins a timeless tale of birth and death, family and friendship. All Over Creation is the emotionally resonant and utterly unique story of an ordinary woman just trying to make sense of it all as the unceasing cycle of all creation continues around her.
Review
"Ozeki's story splices a bit of Edward Abbey into an Anne Tyler plot. The fruits of this mix are definitely worth tasting." Publishers Weekly
Review
"This is great material for a novel. The radicals in particular make for a nice blend of humor and strangely affecting optimism. Ozeki has written a book where dread and hope coexist. Neither is given short shrift or magicked away." Claire Dederer, The New York Times Book Review
Review
"A feast for mind and heart." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"All Over Creation opens wider with every plot twist as it moves from tenderness to comedy to sobering truth and the whole world in the eye of one family's storm. This is Edward Abbey's Monkey Wrench Gang updated by thirty years, with modern environmental challenges on the map and women in the front seat, driving the story. Hooray, Ruth Ozeki rides again." Barbara Kingsolver, author of The Poisonwood Bible
Review
"Ruth Ozeki is bent on taking the novel into corners of American culture no one else has thought to look but where she finds us in all our transcultural and technological weirdness. With a combination of humor and pathos that is all her own, All Over Creation brings the American pastoral forward into the age of agribusiness and genetic engineering. The result is a smart and compelling novel about a world we don't realize we live in." Michael Pollan, author of The Botany of Desire
Review
"What's remarkable about Ruth Ozeki's novels is that she makes a real fictional meal out of meat-and-potatoes subject matter. Literally....All Over Creation resembles a Robert Altman film, all the characters bustling in their own orbits until they gracefully veer into each other." Joy Press, Village Voice
Review
"All Over Creation is a wholly original novel of amazing richness, a tapestry of zany characters who follow their own hearts and passions. With a natural storyteller's ability to communicate both the hilarious and profound, Ozeki writes about love and sex, bioengineering and social responsibility, deftly communicating her uncanny feel for the texture of contemporary American life." Paula Sharp, author of Crows Over a Wheatfield
Review
"Ozeki's characters are utterly charming, and she writes with sensitivity and inventiveness about the complexities of love and nature, deftly humanizing the thorny issues raised by biotechnology with humor and panache in a tale rich in suspense and pathos." Donna Seaman, Booklist
Review
"Ruth Ozeki is a writer of great passion and purpose. She fearlessly tackles big issues, stirs up revolutions, and unveils truths with keen insight and humor that touches our hearts and opens our minds." Gail Tsukiyama,
author of The Samurai's Garden
Synopsis
From the author of My Year of Meats comes the story of a Japanese-American prodigal daughter just trying to make sense of it all as the unceasing cycle of all creation continues around her.
Synopsis
My Year of Meats, Ruth Ozeki’s delicious debut novel, won a devoted following and was hailed by critics as inventing a new genre: the “eco-saga.” Now, Ozeki takes us to the heart of the potato farming industry. When Yumi Fuller returns to her hometown after a twenty-five-year absence, she comes face to face with an old friend, her aging parents, and her conflicted past—as well as the “Seeds of Resistance,” a rollicking environmentalist group that finds trouble wherever they plant themselves. With a quirky cast of characters and a keen eye for the vicissitudes of corporate life, political resistance, youth culture, aging baby boomers, and globalization, as well as the beauty of seeds, roots, and all growing things, All Over Creation offers something for just about everyone.
Synopsis
A warm and witty saga about agribusiness, environmental activism, and communityfrom the celebrated author of My Year of Meats and A Tale for the Time Being
Yumi Fuller hasnt set foot in her hometown of Liberty Falls, Idahoheart of the potato-farming industrysince she ran away at age fifteen. Twenty-five years later, the prodigal daughter returns to confront her dying parents, her best friend, and her conflicted past, and finds herself caught up in an altogether new drama. The post-millennial farming community has been invaded by Agribusiness forces at war with a posse of activists, the Seeds of Resistance, who travel the country in a camping car, The Spudnick,” biofueled by pilfered McDonalds french-fry oil. Following her widely hailed, award-winning debut novel, My Year of Meats, Ruth Ozeki returns here to deliver a quirky cast of characters and a wickedly humorous appreciation of the foibles of corporate life, globalization, political resistance, youth culture, and aging baby boomers. All Over Creation tells a celebratory tale of the beauty of seeds, roots, and growthand the capacity for renewal that resides within us all.
About the Author
Ruth Ozeki, author of the award-winning novel My Year of Meats, worked for more than a decade in television and film. Her documentary and dramatic films have been shown on PBS, at the Sundance Film Festival, and at colleges and universities across the country.