A review by jaimcham
Time Song: Journeys in Search of a Submerged Land by Julia Blackburn

4.0

And I would say to you who does not listen
That time is both longer and shorter
Than I ever imagined:
Land becomes sea, sea becomes land,
Ice into desert, desert into salt marsh,
Salt marsh into birds and fish, animals and people,
Everything forgotten and remembered and forgotten again

A slow, enigmatic book about grief and impermanence, focusing on a stretch of land where Ice Age people once lived that's now swallowed up by the North Sea. It's about her late husband, but also about time folding in on itself -- how layers of living things pass through a place for only a moment, yet leave traces that surface thousands of years later. I found it all totally overwhelming and deeply comforting.