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A review by e_reader
Upstream: Selected Essays by Mary Oliver
hopeful
reflective
relaxing
slow-paced
4.0
I love Mary Oliver’s poetry, and the way she focuses on nature, so I went into this expecting maybe more than I should have. She is a great prose writer, but I think her strengths still lie in poetry.
My biggest complaint of the book is that it felt meandering, and at times disconnected. It’s a collection of selected essays, so it’s less cohesive than it could be. And at times, it felt like my eyes would glaze over. Some essays were just glorified nature imagery. And this book took me about four months to finish despite being so short, due to the slow pace.
All that said, I still enjoyed the book. My favorite essays were “Staying Alive”, “Sister Turtle”, “The Bright Eyes of Eleonora”, “Provincetown”, “Two Short Ones”, and especially “Bird”. I think I will be thinking about “Bird” for the rest of my life. Overall, not a must read, but perhaps a good book for any fan of Mary Oliver.
My biggest complaint of the book is that it felt meandering, and at times disconnected. It’s a collection of selected essays, so it’s less cohesive than it could be. And at times, it felt like my eyes would glaze over. Some essays were just glorified nature imagery. And this book took me about four months to finish despite being so short, due to the slow pace.
All that said, I still enjoyed the book. My favorite essays were “Staying Alive”, “Sister Turtle”, “The Bright Eyes of Eleonora”, “Provincetown”, “Two Short Ones”, and especially “Bird”. I think I will be thinking about “Bird” for the rest of my life. Overall, not a must read, but perhaps a good book for any fan of Mary Oliver.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death