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4.25 AVERAGE
4.25 AVERAGE
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
challenging
dark
emotional
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
My first nonfiction and first 5 Star read of 2023!
This was truly incredible. Deeply touching in very intimate, personal ways. There’s so much to write home about, but I’ll keep it short.
Hewitt’s writing is tender and true and imbued with such light and life. It’s completely captivating and effortlessly moving.
“All Down Darkness Wide” is a book I can see myself perpetually re-reading throughout my life. There’s just so much contained in this slim book.
Definitely an all-time favorite, and I hope to see more prose writing in Hewitt’s future!
This was truly incredible. Deeply touching in very intimate, personal ways. There’s so much to write home about, but I’ll keep it short.
Hewitt’s writing is tender and true and imbued with such light and life. It’s completely captivating and effortlessly moving.
“All Down Darkness Wide” is a book I can see myself perpetually re-reading throughout my life. There’s just so much contained in this slim book.
Definitely an all-time favorite, and I hope to see more prose writing in Hewitt’s future!
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
slow-paced
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
"As he looked at me, it was as though he were looking into me from another world, trying to reach across some void, but everything he said was somehow falling short, not quite carrying its meaning across."
- Sean Hewitt, All Down Darkness Wide, 2022
Such sublime literature. Too good, in fact.
It's actually why I'm not rating this a perfect score. I actually felt that the prose was too technical for me. I'm not saying that's a bad thing - quite the opposite in fact - however it at times reduced my ability to understand the literary devices Hewitt crafts. To be transparent, the writing is crystal clear. It's not as if it's difficult to read or anything, it's just that there's so much densely packed allegory that I felt over my head sometimes (a lot of the time). I'll need to give this several re-reads to even hit the tip of the proverbial iceberg.
With my stupidity in reading comprehension disclosed, this memoir is a fine, truly fine, piece of work. Hewitt is deeply vulnerable across all 230 pages and he describes the queer experience with such delicacy. I think that the final chapter in the memoir, when he reveals the metaphor with the butterfly, is absolutely some of the most beautiful and meaningful series of words strung together, maybe, I've ever read.
While his featured encounters are mostly melancholic, I think he writes with such an optimistic undertone - disguised mind you - that you can always guarantee that, even if his past self doesn't gain anything in circumstance, he collects in lessons, interpretation, and clarity. And the degree to which these transcendences are impressed upon the reader is solely calibrated by the author's mercy, which is naturally, severely lacking.
9/10
- Sean Hewitt, All Down Darkness Wide, 2022
Such sublime literature. Too good, in fact.
It's actually why I'm not rating this a perfect score. I actually felt that the prose was too technical for me. I'm not saying that's a bad thing - quite the opposite in fact - however it at times reduced my ability to understand the literary devices Hewitt crafts. To be transparent, the writing is crystal clear. It's not as if it's difficult to read or anything, it's just that there's so much densely packed allegory that I felt over my head sometimes (a lot of the time). I'll need to give this several re-reads to even hit the tip of the proverbial iceberg.
With my stupidity in reading comprehension disclosed, this memoir is a fine, truly fine, piece of work. Hewitt is deeply vulnerable across all 230 pages and he describes the queer experience with such delicacy. I think that the final chapter in the memoir, when he reveals the metaphor with the butterfly, is absolutely some of the most beautiful and meaningful series of words strung together, maybe, I've ever read.
While his featured encounters are mostly melancholic, I think he writes with such an optimistic undertone - disguised mind you - that you can always guarantee that, even if his past self doesn't gain anything in circumstance, he collects in lessons, interpretation, and clarity. And the degree to which these transcendences are impressed upon the reader is solely calibrated by the author's mercy, which is naturally, severely lacking.
9/10
Content Warnings
Graphic: Mental illness, Suicide, Suicide attempt
Moderate: Homophobia
Minor: Drug use
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
dark
emotional
slow-paced
This book jumped around a lot in a manner that I did not find to be effective. The prose was often pretty good but it got interrupted by weird jumps or the feeling that this was already said.
slow-paced
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
