The Faraway Nearby

Dense and beautiful.

** spoiler alert ** Rebecca Solnit’s writing is immaculate. She has the ability to not only break mental constructs and push boundaries, but play with words to drastically change your perspective on the way you perceive mundane things. She forms connections between seemingly arbitrary objects and themes, such as hot/cold, far/near, blue/red, etc. but applies the connections to real narratives & emphasizes the connectedness of all life. She also writes about the beauty of darkness, of emptiness, and how it contributes to our ways of thinking. She mentions things such as Iceland, apricots, and bears, but somehow manages to weave together a beautiful spiderweb of stories. She does a wonderful job at uncovering the familiar; she shows you the similar aspects that exist within different sectors and tales all whilst embracing the differences. I feel after reading this book that I have a hole in my heart that is somehow overflowing. If you want to become completely encapsulated with beauty or the lack thereof, read this!

This was lovely. “Who drinks your tears, who has your wings, who hears your story?”

Why did it take me so long to get round to reading Solnit's work? She writes so well! Difficult to categorise this - I don't think you can call it a collection of short stories...it's as much about the art of (and need for) connecting through storytelling as it is about the tales themselves. The unifying thread, from a narrative perspective, is Solnit's account of a period in her life when she was forced to confront mortality and transience (partly through witnessing her mother's Alzheimer's and partly through having a brush with breast cancer herself), but there are so many (fascinating) detours into other people's stories that calling it an autobiography seems too narrow. Instantly reminded me of Cloud Atlas because of its structure and the interconnections between each of the sections. Everything is beautifully and skilfully woven together, and the bonus story running along the bottom of each page is the icing on the cake (yes yes I know I'm mixing my metaphors). In case it's not clear...I adored this. Will definitely be rereading.