Book review: The Orchid Thief - Susan Orlean

I don't know shit about orchids. I had a friend in undergrad who loved plants and knew things about them, but that's as close as I come. Plants just don't like me. They have a tendency to die on me, and to aggravate my allergies out of spite.

What I do know is that I saw the movie Adaptation several years ago and I liked it. So when I saw this book, in Costco of all places, I decided to pick it up. See, the book was the "inspiration" for the movie, even though the movie doesn't really follow the story in the book at all. What it does follow is the sense of passion that the author tries to portray in her book.

For this book is the story of obsession. It's the story of people (real people, not fictional) who will spend thousands of dollars on one plant, who will breed plants and then wait 7 years to find out if they were successful. People who go to all ends of the earth and risk unimaginable hardships just to find plants that no one has seen before. People who will risk alligator and snake attacks to get into the Everglades just to see these plants in rare bloom.

Orlean's writing is compelling - she managed to pull me in to a topic that I have never had any real interest in. She manages to create sympathy for characters when other people may just look at them as being crazy. But more than that, she is able to tie this passion for orchids to other passions, so that the average reader, while maybe not caring about orchids at all, is able to understand through the eyes of their own obsessions.

Definitely a good read, and very informative about the subject. Even if you walk away from the book still not caring about orchids, as I did, you will come away with an understanding, and maybe some empathy, for the people who do.