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A review by kerrianne
Water and What We Know: Following the Roots of a Northern Life by Karen Babine
4.0
If I had to choose one word to call this book I'd call it lovely.
I'm a big fan of memoirs/stories/essays centering on sense of place/history of place/preservation of place, and so it's really no surprise I'm a big fan of this book.
There were a couple essays/chapters that had I been Babine's editor I might have suggested re-working or maybe cutting altogether. A couple of essays that maybe didn't quite feel done. Or perhaps just a couple of essays I didn't fully connect to as much as the others. But the majority of the prose really was lovely, and heartwarming, and often reminded me of coming home. (And not just because at various points she was actually talking about my hometown, roads I've driven so much they're etched into my eyes, part of the mountain (north)west where I was born and raised, and to which I still feel so deeply and irrevocably rooted. But also because of that.)
My two favorite quotes: "Everywhere I have lived is stolen land."
"Stories can be lost, but they can also be replanted, transplanted. It is important to be able to read the stories when there are no voices to tell them..."
[Three-point-five stars for waterlogged memories with the power to keep us afloat.]
I'm a big fan of memoirs/stories/essays centering on sense of place/history of place/preservation of place, and so it's really no surprise I'm a big fan of this book.
There were a couple essays/chapters that had I been Babine's editor I might have suggested re-working or maybe cutting altogether. A couple of essays that maybe didn't quite feel done. Or perhaps just a couple of essays I didn't fully connect to as much as the others. But the majority of the prose really was lovely, and heartwarming, and often reminded me of coming home. (And not just because at various points she was actually talking about my hometown, roads I've driven so much they're etched into my eyes, part of the mountain (north)west where I was born and raised, and to which I still feel so deeply and irrevocably rooted. But also because of that.)
My two favorite quotes: "Everywhere I have lived is stolen land."
"Stories can be lost, but they can also be replanted, transplanted. It is important to be able to read the stories when there are no voices to tell them..."
[Three-point-five stars for waterlogged memories with the power to keep us afloat.]