Several friends recommended
this book to me, and once I got my hands on it, I understood why.
Barbara
Kingsolver has taken the plot of Dickens’ David Copperfield, and transposed it to the Appalachian Mountains of
Virginia. Her book is told in Demon’s voice—
lively, personable, self-doubting, hungry, raw. I stayed up reading it
far into the night, and started in again once I reached the end, unwilling to
relinquish such terrific company.
No surprise this book has won so many prizes.
It really is Kingsolver’s masterpiece.
Demon's story begins with his traumatic birth to a single mother in a single-wide trailer, looking 'like a little blue prizefighter.' For the life ahead of him he would need all of that fighting spirit, along with buckets of charm, a quick wit, and some unexpected talents, legal and otherwise.
In the southern Appalachian Mountains of Virginia, poverty isn't an idea, it's as natural as the grass grows. For a generation growing up in this world, at the heart of the modern opioid crisis, addiction isn't an abstraction, it's neighbours, parents, and friends. 'Family' could mean love, or reluctant foster…
I have kept track of my own dreams
since the age of sixteen, writing them down each morning, and often
illustrating them too. But Tina Tau has done far more. Her life has been, quite
literally, guided by dreams.
Ask for Horses could
be called a double memoir, a conversation between the worlds, visible and
invisible. The writing is lucid and engaging, the plot (such as it is) both
lively and unpredictable. Tina Tau herself emerges an unlikely heroine:
generous, warmhearted, and intrepid.
An adventure story in two realms, a conversation between the visible and invisible worlds: in this eloquent memoir, Tina Tau reveals the life-saving intelligence of her dreams.
". . . Ask for something so alive, so surprising, that it will crack your life wide open."
An adventure story in two realms, a conversation between the visible and invisible worlds; in this eloquent memoir, Tina Tau reveals the life-saving intelligence of her dreams. As a young woman she tries to outrun her pain by moving every year, often thousands of miles at a time. But by paying attention to her dreams,…
I have read other books by Susan
Griffin, including Women & Nature and A Chorus of Stones, but this one is my favorite.
Susan
Griffin is a writer and a poet, she is also a long-time writing teacher. Her
book is made up of a series of miniature essays—what the poet Ross Gay calls “essayettes”—which can be read in any order. Subjects include “Silence,” “False Starts,” “Taking
Time,” and “Killing the Angel in the House,” most of them no longer than a
paragraph or two.
Because each one rests like an island in its own private sea
of white space, there is something curiously comforting about the book. Here is
the wise mentor you have always longed for, the calm authoritative older
sister. “Pause a moment,” she advises. “Take a breath. You can do it. There is
no need to be overwhelmed.”
In an elegant but contemporary voice, award-winning author Susan Griffin breaks down the creative process step-by-step, guiding the reader through a practical course in how to begin and end a work of literature, whether fiction or nonfiction, poetry, or prose
The distinguished author of more than twenty-two books, many award-winning, Susan Griffin distills daily wisdom garnered from more than five decades teaching creative writing and editing manuscripts, as well as from her own writing. This collection of brief but ultimately pithy chapters designed to help beginning writers get started also guides experienced writers through blocks and difficulties of all kinds.…
Most of us think of listening in fairly literal fashion: human beings
listening (or not listening) to one another; the pleasure of attending to a
familiar piece of music. But listening can have a far broader and more capacious meaning, moving out beyond
the small apparatus of the ears to the hands or belly or
enveloping spirit/mind. When an athlete speaks of “listening to his body,” or a gardener describes herself as “listening to the land,” they are using the word as McEwen chooses to use it here—as
an extended metaphor for openness and receptivity, rippling out from the
self-centered human to the farthest reaches of the non-human world.
