I was scrolling through my TBR list when I came across Rootbound. Since I re-read Rewilding fairly recently, Rootbound’s subtitle: “rewilding a life” appealed to me and I decided to give it a go.

Despite its subtitle, Rootbound isn’t about rewilding one’s life in the sense of letting nature take over. Instead, this is a personal, rather meditative book on the healing power of gardening after a devastating breakup. The book covers the span of a year and starts when Alice and her long-time partner break up. After that, we follow her through the year as she looks for a new place, figures out what to do with the house she and her ex owned, and continues to seek nature and the gardens she likes. There’s a bit of botanical history, there’s a bit of botanical information, there’s quite a bit on Alice, and basically, it all melds together as one whole.

To be honest, this cross-genre writing had me thinking of Cream Teas, Traffic Jam, and Sunburn, although that book is a lot lighter and funnier. And maybe it’s Peat’s recent post on the geography of genre but this very small sample size had me wondering if it’s a British thing to mix memoir with historical nonfiction – perhaps someone can recommend me something similar from a different country?

But I digress. Going back to the book, I found the writing to be lovely. Vincent writes very openly but without giving away salacious details. I felt her heartbreak, but I also think she managed to focus more on the emotions rather than the events, which in turn helped her generalise things. Two quotes I saved:

“We’d been shown that to practice enough would result in achievement, but never taught where to find the satisfaction of getting something done beyond the sake of it.”

and

“It was easier to balance life when we lived it in boxes; we seek community and connection online, through our digital selves and the friends we make a work, kept separate from the friends we know from home.”

Overall, I really enjoyed Rootbound! It’s a quiet, calming book that weaves gardening and memoir together. While I still don’t think I will ever pick up gardening (especially not the way Vincent does), I appreciated her for the plants and enjoyed following her on her journey to garden better and heal from heartbreak.