A review by sam_bizar_wilcox
An Inventory of Losses by Judith Schalansky

4.0

Physically gorgeous and conceptually arresting, Schalansky's An Inventory of Losses is one of the most delightful literary treats: a genre-less series of musings and writing that remind the reader of the power of language in the act of recollection, and the inevitability of forgetting. Though some of the essays/passages work less than others (and though the prose isn't always able to capture the magic of what, I think, the author intends) Schalansky's subjects are consistently charming, consistently poetic, as they are assembled in a rich catalog of nonexistence. The narrative that unfolds is one of an archivist on an ill-conceived mission for preservation, one as plagued by folly as it is by romance. At its core, however, An Inventory of Losses does what all good literature ought to do: it forces the reader to recognize truths that are inherent but challenging to acknowledge. Here, we direct our vision to ephemeral inevitability.

By flying so close to this truth - that all things will eventually disappear, that all things must pass - however, the book gives the reader not a morbid or melancholic glance at life and the world; rather, it opens our eyes to an almost limitless potentiality of how time can change things. As it directs our attention to the fleeting and gone, the book gives a greater sense of what it might entail to be infinite.