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emburs's review
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
3.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death of parent and Grief
Moderate: Animal death and Confinement
Minor: Miscarriage
bandherbooks's review
3.0
set of essays connected by the author's musings on 'home' and sense of place, communicated by flowery descriptions of the various places she's lived, focusing on the natural elements and animals that inhabit them.
mostly memoir, with discussions of grief (her mother passed of cancer while she was quite young) and the author's stay in a mental health institution in the 1980s.
Beautiful prose, not normally a book i'd pick up but one i know a bunch of readers would enjoy, especially my outdoorsy, woods//wisconsin living and loving family.
mostly memoir, with discussions of grief (her mother passed of cancer while she was quite young) and the author's stay in a mental health institution in the 1980s.
Beautiful prose, not normally a book i'd pick up but one i know a bunch of readers would enjoy, especially my outdoorsy, woods//wisconsin living and loving family.
ashleylynn's review
emotional
inspiring
relaxing
slow-paced
3.75
“Just this year I learned that there is a word for the sound of wind in leaves — psithurism. How many different melodies have been played on the leaves of this old oak over the decades, ranging from the gentle, surf-like rise and fall I hear now, to the rougher, rain-driven blasts of thunderstorms that make the leaves stick together in a sodden mass, to the winter gales that snatch the few rattling leaves from the branches, crumpling them together like wet tissue.”
“No matter how far I travel from that New England summer, I carry the pond balanced inside me, a bowl of bright water.”
“After living for many years in a desert place, the river sounded like a voice I'd once known well but had not heard for a very long time. I recognized it right away, as I have always believed I might recognize my mother's voice were I ever to hear it aloud again.”
“But deer are my totem animal, my soul creature, my secret self, I cannot be objective about them. In my next life I want to be born with a constellation of white flowers on my back. I want to lie curled in a hollow of sweet prairie grass, scentless and trusting, waiting for my mother to return and claim me.”
“The window is open on frog-song and Canada goose-murmur, crane-call and coyote-yip, their voices stitching the air together in an invisible quilt of sound I pull over my shoulders, everything connected to everything else as it always has been, as it will still be, come tomorrow, come morning.”
“No matter how far I travel from that New England summer, I carry the pond balanced inside me, a bowl of bright water.”
“After living for many years in a desert place, the river sounded like a voice I'd once known well but had not heard for a very long time. I recognized it right away, as I have always believed I might recognize my mother's voice were I ever to hear it aloud again.”
“But deer are my totem animal, my soul creature, my secret self, I cannot be objective about them. In my next life I want to be born with a constellation of white flowers on my back. I want to lie curled in a hollow of sweet prairie grass, scentless and trusting, waiting for my mother to return and claim me.”
“The window is open on frog-song and Canada goose-murmur, crane-call and coyote-yip, their voices stitching the air together in an invisible quilt of sound I pull over my shoulders, everything connected to everything else as it always has been, as it will still be, come tomorrow, come morning.”
“All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them.”
- Isak Dinesen
Content Warnings
Minor: Death of parent and Animal death
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