The $64 Tomato

The $64 Tomato: How One Man Nearly Lost His Sanity, Spent a Fortune, and Endured an Existential Crisis in the Quest for the Perfect Garden
by William Alexander

304 pages
Algonquin Books, 2006
List Price: $13.95

 

I'd heard about this book long before I read it and all of what I'd heard was good. Then I read it and knew why.  There are many books written about the actual experiences of starting a garden for the first time, but few will have you smiling most of the way through it like The $64 Tomato.

Gardening has a way of sucking you in and making a liar out of you.  "Oh, I'm just going to grow a few things in this plot of dirt here..." you say, but before you know it, you're elbow deep in soil, compost, how-to books, and have spent your very last dime on that wonderful new garden tool.  How on earth does that happen?

Alexander shares his own personal obsession with gardening and all he encounters and learns along the way. Undeterred in his quest for an organic garden, he finds the deer and weeds and neighbors to be just a few things that seemingly conspire against him. Nevertheless, he persists in finding a way to have the garden he always wanted, if not quite in the way he imagined.

I dare any gardener to read it and then say you have no idea what he's talking about.

William Alexander is the author of the best-selling memoir, The $64 Tomato, and the forthcoming (April 2010) 52 Loaves: In Search of Truth, Meaning, and Really Good Toast, his hilarious and moving account of a year spent striving to bake the perfect loaf of bread.

He has appeared on NPR's Morning Edition, at the National Book Festival in Washington, DC, and was a 2006 Quill Book Awards finalist. Alexander has been a frequent contributor the New York Times op-ed pages, where he has opined on such issues as the Christmas tree threatening his living room, Martha Stewart, and the difficulties of being organic.

When not gardening, baking, or writing, Bill keeps his day job as director of technology at a psychiatric research institution, where, after 28 years, he persists in the belief that he is a researcher, not a researchee.

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The book reviewed was purchased by the reviewer.