What makes his book completely mesmerizing—besides his lovely prose, that is—is how exquisitely it balances between the poles of revelation and disintegration.
A few crucial topics feel underexplored. At various points in this memoir the author is at work on poems, or a novel. Yet he never says if one reason he wanted that remote house was simply to clear space to write. (He supported himself on meager savings.) The literary motive, if there is one, is left to the side.
