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nebraskanwriter's review
adventurous
funny
hopeful
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
slow-paced
1.5
“Humility is the prize of the leaf-world. Vainglory is the bane of us, the humans.” ~’Upstream’
I’ve been wanting to read more books outside of my comfort zone this year and this was definitely that.
The story was odd, with really no true structure. The book begins with the author describing nature (which was my favorite part of the whole novel). As someone who can never get enough of the birds singing, the wind whispering through the leaves and the breathtaking splendor of the sunsets, I related to these beautiful prose of nature most entirely. Her descriptions and sentences in general in this section, so many one-liners that I highlighted.
However, after that, she kinda lost me. She weaves analysis’s of the works of Emerson, Whitman and Poe in between her talking about childhood memories, animals eating other animals (including a whole vignette dedicated to watching a spider eating a cricket…. Again, I ask you, why? 😂), one anecdote about her possibly drinking milk straight from a nursing cat (don’t know if she was trying to be ✨artistic✨ with this or not but YIKES), in-depth descriptions of the sea and its creatures (including the butchering of those creatures), the fishing town she’s lived in, etc. It was all a bit random and strange but I did love the beginning, especially the lines where she talks about passing this down to the next generation and that “attention is the beginning of devotion.”
Glad to have read it and I can see why people like it but after she stopped talking about the trees, I kinda got disconnected from the story.
I’ve been wanting to read more books outside of my comfort zone this year and this was definitely that.
The story was odd, with really no true structure. The book begins with the author describing nature (which was my favorite part of the whole novel). As someone who can never get enough of the birds singing, the wind whispering through the leaves and the breathtaking splendor of the sunsets, I related to these beautiful prose of nature most entirely. Her descriptions and sentences in general in this section, so many one-liners that I highlighted.
However, after that, she kinda lost me. She weaves analysis’s of the works of Emerson, Whitman and Poe in between her talking about childhood memories, animals eating other animals (including a whole vignette dedicated to watching a spider eating a cricket…. Again, I ask you, why? 😂), one anecdote about her possibly drinking milk straight from a nursing cat (don’t know if she was trying to be ✨artistic✨ with this or not but YIKES), in-depth descriptions of the sea and its creatures (including the butchering of those creatures), the fishing town she’s lived in, etc. It was all a bit random and strange but I did love the beginning, especially the lines where she talks about passing this down to the next generation and that “attention is the beginning of devotion.”
Glad to have read it and I can see why people like it but after she stopped talking about the trees, I kinda got disconnected from the story.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death of parent, Animal death, Blood, and Death
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