Book Review: "The Apple Orchard" by Pete Brown

I love reading books like this. Books that tell you the history, the culture and the stories of mythology surrounding something very specific. I remember reading one about lemons and their importance in Italian history, culture and the love of citrus fruit. The romance between a country, its culture, its history and its food always manages to entrance and enchant me. It’s like someone is writing a love letter to a food that has served such incredible importance in the storytelling history of a nation and a people and that love letter includes everything from the science of growing the food all the way to historical anecdotes and all the way down once again to personal experiences. This is also true of Pete Brown’s “The Apple Orchard” as we explore the timeless and most English of fruits - the apple - we also get an international history wrought with humour, analysis and grand literary control. This book does not just tell the story of the apple, but it helps us to understand its place in history, its place in our country and its place in our hearts.

I think that my favourite part of this book was when Pete Brown discusses the ‘forbidden fruit’ theories and how the Garden of Eden is something yet to be uncovered even though people do believe it existed. He talks about not only the stories and mythologies but he also speaks of the way in which apples grew in the ancient times and how, in the Middle Eastern world, that just would not be possible. I think some of the most beautiful writing though, comes from when Pete Brown is telling the reader sweet anecdotes of him and his wife, Liz. It is like seeing into a couple’s album of treasured memories and walking through their timeline. Pete Brown intersperses these tales of humour, love and life throughout the book in between the covers of science, history, culture and fact. And I think that I would not have this book any other way. It reads not just like a love letter to the apple, but also as a lesson to the reader of things we should not take for granted. The apple is one of the most versatile fruits in the world and also one of the most English of fruits - but Pete Brown’s argument of looking at the apple not just from our own standpoint, but also from a cultural and even one in which we - as amateur gardeners - may watch the apple orchard grow. It is a fascinating sight with a tremendous amount of control and attention to the language use. Pete Brown is an incredible writer with a comforting sense of humour and a simple wonderful style.

In conclusion, I think that there is much more than just apples in this book. There is a history on the international scale, there is culture from far and wide stretching all the way from New Orleans to Jerusalem, there is a scientific side in which we are taught about the trees and the apples. But the most appealing to someone like me is most definitely the storytelling techniques in which apples, for centuries, have been used as the fruits we should avoid - wherever did they get this reputation and what good/bad came of it? Is there redemption for the apple, is there new ways in which the apple could symbolise hope? “The Big Apple” - as Pete Brown mentions - a symbol of New York. Apple Computers, A is for Apple. Etc. The list goes on. But the real question stands: is eating an apple an act of rebellion?