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A review by sl0w_reader
All the Little Live Things by Wallace Stegner
3.0
Not Stegner's best, but still very good indeed. His main character, Joe Allston, a retired educated man living with his wife in the California hills, meditates on the nature of intrusive youth, intrusive disease, intrusive wildlife.
He introduces himself: "I am concerned with gloomier matters: the condition of being flesh, susceptible to pain, infected with consciousness and the consciousness of consciousness, doomed to death and the awareness of death. My life stains the air around me. I am a tea bag left too long in the cup, and my steepings grow darker and bitterer."
As the story shows, sorrow and death find us all out - we can never 'retire' from these - and, in Allston's estimation, makes our life richer for it. It's a sobering and grim book in some ways, but full of 'wild' life too.
He introduces himself: "I am concerned with gloomier matters: the condition of being flesh, susceptible to pain, infected with consciousness and the consciousness of consciousness, doomed to death and the awareness of death. My life stains the air around me. I am a tea bag left too long in the cup, and my steepings grow darker and bitterer."
As the story shows, sorrow and death find us all out - we can never 'retire' from these - and, in Allston's estimation, makes our life richer for it. It's a sobering and grim book in some ways, but full of 'wild' life too.