Book Review: Foreign Fruit - A Personal History of the Orange by Katie Goh ★⯪☆☆☆

I didn't care for this book. It attempts to interweave botanical and cultural history with an autobiography and ends up doing neither particularly well. For every dose of poetry about the far-flung and exotic journey of the fruit, there's a dull recitation of facts from Wikipedia. Occasionally various origin myths of citrus varieties are presented - there's no attempt to engage with them, seek out the truth, or comment on what they might mean. Instead, the author seems more interested in inserting herself into the narrative. It's all rather uneasy. She spends a lots of times talking about hard it is for immigrants and their children. But her dad was a doctor who chose to stay in his new country, she's a fairly prominent journalist, and they spend a lot of time jetting across the world. I know we're all fighting a battle no one else can see, but this isn't the story of someone's struggle against insurmountable odds. There's an excruciating passage where she tries to rail against the…