RaveIrish Times (IRE)Assured and affecting ... A powerful and bracing memoir ... This is a book that will make you see the world differently: it asks you to reconsider the animals and insects we often view as pests – the rat, for example, and the moth. It asks you to look at the sea and the sky and the trees anew; to wonder, when you are somewhere beautiful, whether you might be in a thin place, and what your responsibilities are to your location.It asks you to show compassion for people you think are difficult, to cultivate empathy, to try to understand the trauma that made them the way they are.
Vivian Gornick
RaveThe Irish Times (IRE)Gornick (85) is a shrewd, droll and avowedly feminist essayist and critic. These previously published writings, collected in reverse chronological order (from the late 2010s to early 1970s), offer a fascinating insight into what has been achieved and what has been lost during those five decades ... Her presence on the page is less overt in the literary criticism published since 1999. Reading her crisp, incisive prose, there is no doubt about how she feels about the work of such canonical figures as Herman Melville, Primo Levi and Hannah Arendt, but she becomes less incendiary over the years ... This intelligent, sometimes provocative, collection of essays will send you back to the bookshop or down a Google rabbit hole.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay[/caption]
