The Weeds A Novel
The Weeds by Katy Simpson Smith, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux on April 18, 2023, is a novel that intertwines the lives of two women across different timelines as they navigate their desires and the challenges they face. Set against the backdrop of the Roman Colosseum, the narrative follows a Mississippi woman who seeks to catalog plant species while reflecting on her own life choices. Simultaneously, a woman in 1854 grapples with her circumstances as she is indentured to a botanist, compelled to document flora while yearning for a love that seems out of reach.
Readers will find a rich exploration of themes such as the invisibility of women’s work and the impact of a changing climate. The narrative delves into the lives of these women as they confront societal constraints and seek small acts of defiance. Through their botanical pursuits, they uncover deeper truths about survival and the cost of knowledge. This edition spans 320 pages and is presented in English, offering a lyrical and incisive look at the intersection of science and personal agency.
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A Best Book of the Year at The New Yorker
A Must Read at The Boston Globe, Literary Hub, The Millions, and Garden & Gun
“[A] lyrical incisive novel . . . [about] a changing climate, the invisibility of women’s work, and the perseverance of unofficial histories.” —The New Yorker
In Katy Simpson Smith’s The Weeds, two women, connected across time, edge toward transgression in pursuit of their desires.
A Mississippi woman pushes through the ruin of the Roman Colosseum, searching for plants. She has escaped her life, signed up to catalog all the species growing in this place. Crawling along the stones, she wonders how she has landed here, a reluctant botanist amid a snarl of tourists in comfortable sandals. She hunts for a scientific agenda and a direction of her own.
In 1854, a woman pushes through the jungle of the Roman Colosseum, searching for plants. As punishment for her misbehavior, she has been indentured to the English botanist Richard Deakin, for whom she will compile a flora. She is a thief, and she must find new ways to use her hands. If only the woman she loves weren’t on a boat, with a husband. But love isn’t always possible. She logs 420 species.
Through a list of seemingly minor plants and their uses—medical, agricultural, culinary—these women calculate intangible threats: a changing climate, the cost of knowledge, and the ways repeated violence can upend women’s lives. They must forge their own small acts of defiance and slip through whatever cracks they find. How can anyone survive?
Lush, intoxicating, and teeming with mischief, Katy Simpson Smith’s The Weeds is a tense, mesmerizing page-turner about science and survival, the roles women are given and have taken from them, and the lives they make for themselves.
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