Greene is trying to make sense—of anything, really—but especially the things that matter most in life: love, connection, death, grief, the universe, meaning, nothingness, and everythingness. Through a series of encounters with strangers, children, and animals, the wild merges with the domestic; the everyday meets the sublime. Each essay returns readers to our smallest moments and our largest ones in a book that makes us realize—through its exuberant language, its playful curation, and its delightful associative leapfrogging—that they are, in fact, one in the same.
Greene’s scrupulous attention to the natural world’s manifold curiosities sometimes does indeed make her a credible witness to the mysteries of existence. At other moments this scrupulous attention manifests as mannered prose...and it’s then, when the writing seems to be trying too hard to excite our capacity for wonder, that the project stalls out ... Greene’s voice and mind are unmistakably her own, and the very best pieces...are so elegiac and piercing, so authoritatively atmospheric, that the six or 12 or nine pages they’re afforded aren’t nearly enough.
In a time when all the familiar narratives—of good triumphing over evil or truth prevailing over its opposite—feel far from assured, when humans themselves seem so at odds with each other, it’s nice to imagine there are some ideas that might still connect us. It’s also nice to know there’s comfort to be found in the meandering of our own minds and the spectacular epiphanies of everyday existence. With her deftly crafted essays, Greene celebrates the meaning-making inherent to the human experience. She reminds us that there is revelation all around.
The combination of topics big and small and focuses broad and narrow with her eccentric perspective will please fans of creative essays and readers eager to experience Greene’s distinctive approach.
