Resumo de The Angel Tree: The Enchanting Quest For The World?s Oldest Olive Tree

Incredibly wealthy people can divest themselves of their wealth in an incredible variety of ways. They can trade in exquisite and precious commodities: ivory carvings, rare vintages of wines, exotic orchids, or, remarkably, ancient trees. Olive trees, prized for their beauty as well as their ability to live for thousands of years, are bought and sold in select circles for prices up to $30, 000 (CAD).

A minor collision at a road construction site propelled Alex Dingwall-Main into this elite sphere. As this book begins, Dingwall-Main, who just happens to be a garden designer working in the south of France, rear-ends a luxury sedan, which just happens to belong to Regis LaTour, a wealthy estate owner looking for some ideas for a courtyard garden. Their unfortunate introduction leads to a consultation and the eventual decision to showcase the world?s oldest olive tree in LaTour?s garden.

Of course, Mr. Dingwall-Main doesn?t know where this particular tree is, or how old it might be. But the quest to find out will send him across four countries and immerse him in the lore of olives. Out of that quest comes this book.

He has altered names of people and places of course, to preserve privacy, but the story is true, if often incredible. Perhaps the most unbelievable portions of the book have to do with the olive trees themselves.
Some of these trees date back at least three thousand years, giving weight to the belief that olives never really die. Amazingly, even a tree that is several millennia old can be dug up, transported across half of Europe, and replanted in a different climate zone with no long-lasting ill effects. Dingwall-Main discovers and transmits this and other information in such detail that, by the end, you will know all you ever wanted to know about olive trees. Probably more.
And that is where the book tends to bog down. Mr. Dingwall-Main describes not only the olives but also every garden he comes across, an occupational hazard of garden designers, I suppose. You have to love plants to truly appreciate this book. And even then, the string of scientific Latin names are a little sleep-inducing. They roll of the tongue mellifluously, but twenty of them strung together in one paragraph will make even the most dedicated of readers bleep over them to get to some kind?any kind?of action.

The descriptions themselves are hit-and-miss, with some pages dripping purple prose. Upon seeing a grove of thirty 3000-year-old-trees, the author awkwardly expresses the feelings they evoke in him: ?The massive trunks, contorted by the hurting sway of a never-ending life, were fully paid up constituents of a mournful lodge.? However, the emotion and ideas behind the occasional verbal baggage are very engaging.
In fact, the book is, as its title somewhat immodestly proclaims, ?enchanting.? This is due partly to the whimsical quality of the quest, and partly to the characters that inhabit it. The most memorable of these must be the bombastic Spanish olive merchant, Se?or Junos, with his ?cigar stuck in his mouth like a zeppelin caught in a vice? and his blithe mangling of the author?s name. He is introduced and dismissed early on in the book, but with a hint that this crafty Spaniard isn?t about to let ?Se?or Dingley-Man? and his fabulously wealthy commission get away easily. In the end, Junos is crucial to the resolution of the quest, although not in the way that M. LaTour first imagined it.
Some books are about the journey, some about the destination. This book is a little of both. Mr. Dingwall-Main certainly takes his time getting to the point of the story, but you don?t read a book like this to get to the point. You already know, more or less, where he?s going?the enjoyment is in discovering how he gets there. It is above all a story of human interest, with incursions into the realms of heritage and history, culture and horticulture, good food and wine, and, of course, olives.

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